DisjoinDisjunctoct2010

8/8/2019 DisjoinDisjunctoct2010

1/29

Disjoining Disjunctivism

Clayton Littlejohn

[email protected]

1 Introduction

One possible view to take about the evidence of the senses is that of the men-

talist. The mentalists insist that individuals in the same non-factive mentalstates have the same evidence for their beliefs.1 This does not tell us what yourevidence is, but it purports to tell us what your evidence could not be. Theywould find nothing wrong with this sort of reasoning:

If there is a cat in the corner and it looks to you as if there is, you havegood reason to believe there is a cat in the corner. Indeed, you mighthave good enough reason to believe this. Since it can look to you as ifthere is a cat there even if the nearest cat is miles away, experiencecan provide you with a sufficiently good reason for belief even ifthere is no cat. The reasons provided by veridical experience giveyou the right to believe. The same is true for the reasons subjectivelyindistinguishable hallucination provide. If so, the justificatory work

is done by the elements common to hallucination and perception.These elements do their justificatory work just as well in cases ofperception and hallucination. After all, you have the same evidenceeither way.

On the mentalist view, the conditions that determine whether your experienceis veridical or not have nothing to do with the nature of the psychological statesand events by virtue of which it looks to you as if there is a cat in the corner,they do not determine what evidence you have, and so they have nothing todo with the proper description of the reasons you have for believing any of theworldly propositions you might consider. So, they accept:

1See Conee and Feldman 2004 and 2008. There are passages where they acknowledge thatsomeone could say that subjects in the same mental states have the same evidence and stillcount as a mentalist, even if they believed that there are factive mental states and believedalso that if two individuals were in different factive mental states, they could have differentevidence even if they were in the same non-factive mental states. They reject this sort of viewfor reasons we shall discuss below and I shall reserve the term mentalist for the view theydefend.

1


2/29

Veridical experience and sub jectively indistinguishable hallucinationprovide you with the same evidence for your worldly beliefs (Same

Reasons).2

The conditions that distinguish veridical from non-veridical experience clearlyhave a role to play in determining whether your perceptual beliefs constituteknowledge, but not whether they are justifiably held.

Lets consider an alternative. McDowell thinks the line of reasoning justsketched is seriously flawed. The mistake, he would say, is in thinking thatsince it can look to you as if there is a cat in the corner even if there is no cat,you have the same reason to believe a feline is present whether one is presentor it merely looks to you as if one is. Everyone agrees that the conditions thatdistinguish hallucination from veridical experience are essential to knowledge,but McDowell insists that knowledge is itself a standing in the space of reasonsand so would insist that the conditions that distinguish veridical experience

from hallucination determine what reasons you have for your worldly beliefs.3To say that we have the same reasons whether a cat is present or not is to saythat we cannot know whether a cat is truly there when it looks to us as if thereis one. So, as he sees it, Same Reasons leads rather quickly to an unattractivesort of skepticism. To avoid this unfortunate skeptical view, he thinks we mustsay:

The evidence veridical experience provides is better than the evi-dence provided by subjectively indistinguishable hallucination in thesense that veridical experience provides evidence that hallucinationdoes not (Better Reasons).4

Of course, those who accept Same Reasons typically reject skepticism, but he

thinks they have no right to do so. He is right to think this.While the mentalists critics say that Same Reasons leads to skepticism, Mc-Dowell would insist that Better Reasons does not save you from the skeptic.Not on its own, at any rate. Better Reasons tells us nothing about the natureof perceptual experience. It only tells us that the reasons we have when experi-ence is veridical are better than the reasons we have when we hallucinate. If youcombine this view with the traditional view of experience on which the natureof the psychological states and events by virtue of which it looks to you as if pare the same whether you see p or are hallucinating, the qualities by virtue ofwhich your reasons are thought to be better would be blankly external to yoursubjectivity. For McDowell, this is verboten:

The root idea is that ones epistemic standing . . . cannot intelligibly

be constituted, even in part, by matters blankly external to how itis with one subjectively. For how could such matters be other thanbeyond ones ken? And how could matters beyond ones ken make

2This is a popular view. See also Huemer 2006 and Silins 2005.3McDowell 1995, pp. 877.4Williamson 2000 also defends this view.

2


3/29

any difference to ones epistemic standing? . . . But the disjunctiveconception of appearances shows a way to detach this internalist

intuition from the requirement of a non-question begging demonstra-tion. When someone has a fact made manifest to him, the obtainingof this fact contributes to his epistemic standing on the question.But the obtaining of the fact is precisely not blankly external to hissubjectivity, as it would be if the truth about that were exhaustedby the highest common factor.5

The one point on which McDowell and the mentalists seem to agree is thatnothing can confer any justificatory benefit upon you unless it corresponds tosome mental difference that distinguishes you from those who do not enjoy thisbenefit. Because he thinks that experience can embrace worldly facts, McDowellis happy to say that the veridicality of an experience can provide a justificatorybenefit an indistinguishable hallucination cannot. For their part, the mentalists

say that the veridicality of an experience cannot confer any benefit upon you,so the justificatory standing of a belief is constituted wholly by the elementscommon to veridical perception and indistinguishable hallucination.6

As the passage indicates, McDowell insists that the problems that arise forthe mentalists arise for anyone who denies:

An appearance can either be a mere appearance, as with halluci-nation, or a fact made perceptually manifest. The nature of thepsychological states and events by virtue of it looks to you as if pdepends upon whether you are hallucinating or your experience isveridical (Disjunctivism).

Thus, McDowells target seems to include most of the orthodox accounts of

epistemic justification in that they deny that the justification of perceptualbelief depends upon the veridicality of the particular experience that gave riseto it.7

We can summarize McDowells epistemological argument for Disjunctivismas follows. Knowledge is an epistemic standing and Same Reasons says that theconditions essential to that standing are blankly external to your subjectivity.Anything blankly external to your subjectivity is beyond your ken and to say

51998, pp. 390.6McDowell does not deny that there is something common to veridical experience and

hallucination. In response to a recent paper of Burges, McDowell says explicitly that hisview recognizes a common state type that is present in both cases of veridical experienceand hallucination. See his 2010, pp. 244. What he denies is that hallucination and veridicalexperience are exhausted by this appearance state.

7Thus, McDowells target is broader than Conee and Feldmans mentalist view or Huemers

phenomenal conservatism. Externalist views such as Goldmans 1986 reliabilism, Bergmanns2006 proper-functionalism, and Comesanas 2010 evidentialist reliabilism are all targets. Itis not at all clear that those who defend these views defend Better Reasons, but even ifthey thought that they had the resources to do so, they cannot point to causal differencesbetween cases of hallucination and perception as the feature that explains why the reasonsexperience provides in the good case are better than those provided by an indisitnguishablehallucinatory experience.

3


4/29

that these matters contribute to your epistemic standing cuts against the inter-nalist intuition. If you endorse Better Reasons but hold to the traditional view

of experience, you do not avoid the skeptical consequences of Same Reasonssince your view implies that the conditions essential to knowledge are alwaysblankly external to your subjectivity and so beyond your ken. The only alterna-tive to skepticism is a view that combines Better Reasons with Disjunctivism.So, on the plausible assumption that we have perceptual knowledge, we have toreject the traditional conception of experience.8

Those who take a dim view of the epistemological argument for Disjunctivismmight say that McDowell tries to derive an implausible claim about the nature ofexperience from implausible claims about the justification of perceptual belief.Not only is he wrong to think that Same Reasons leads to skepticism and wrongto endorse Better Reasons, he is wrong to think Disjunctivism could explainBetter Reasons. While I think McDowells argument does not succeed, theproblem with the argument is not Better Reasons. For reasons I shall discussbelow, we should endorse both Better Reasons and this stronger claim:

Only in the case of veridical perception do you have good enoughreason for your worldly beliefs. If you believe on the basis of hallu-cination, you cannot believe with justification. You can believe withsufficient justification if your experience is veridical (Good Enough).

The questionable step in McDowells argument is precisely the step where Mc-Dowell tries to derive Disjunctivism from Better Reasons. Once we see whyBetter Reasons and Good Enough are true, we can see why we do not need totake any stand on whether Disjunctivism is true.9

2 A DilemmaAccording to McDowell, the mentalist view leads to an implausible form ofskepticism, and for reasons discussed below, I think he is right. In fairness, weshould observe that McDowells view comes with its own skeptical problems.In the course of trying to explain how perceptual knowledge is possible, heprovides us with the materials we need to argue that we can never come toknow something by means of inductive inference. So, we face a dilemma and itseems the only way to understand how both perceptual and inductive knowledgeis possible is to reject both views and find some third way.

To see what the worry is, suppose knowledge is a standing in the spaceof reasons and that the difference between knowledge and ignorance cannotbe blankly external to your subjectivity. Given these assumptions, it seems

8Remember that McDowells ambitions are relatively modest. He hopes to describe theconditions under which a kind of skeptical argument fails, not provide premises for refutingthe skeptic. See his 2008, pp. 378.

9Byrne and Logue 2008 say that you can accept McDowells epistemological claims withoutendorsing his Disjunctivist approach to experience, but they do not try o show where hisepistemological argument for Disjunctivism goes wrong .

4


5/29

McDowell is committed to the view that the difference between someone whoknows p and someone who does not know p cannot just be that one subject has a

true belief and the other believes something false.10 Compare cases of mistakenbelief and knowledge and on McDowells view there must always be a furtherdifference in the reasons that bear on these subjects beliefs. Not only is there adifference in the reasons that bear on their beliefs, this is a difference that hasto do with their reasons for believing. If it did not, the difference between theirsituations would be blankly external to them. So, it appears that McDowell iscommitted to the following claim:

If you know p, you believe p on a different basis than anyone whobelieves p but happens not to know that p is true (Different Basis).11

Different Basis entails that if you know p, you believe p on a different basis thananyone who mistakenly believes p. So, in p-worlds, subjects in very similar

epistemic situations must believe p on a different basis than you do. But, thisentails that if you know p, you believe on a basis that is incompatible with p.This just is the infallibilist view:

If you know p, your belief must be based on something incompatiblewith p (Infallibilism).12

Infallibilism rules out the possibility of coming to know something by means ofinductive inference. If such knowledge is possible, it is possible that the basisfor your belief is a basis you could have had even if your belief were mistaken. IfI believe correctly that the n+1st draw from my bag of marbles will be black onthe basis of n observations of black draws and you believe incorrectly that then+1st draw from your bag will be black on the basis of n observations of blackdraws, there is a perfectly good sense in which we believe on the same basis.

10See Comesana 2005.11Van Cleve 2004 also ascribes this view to McDowell. Dodd 2007 ascribes a similar view

to Williamson 2000, but for reasons discussed in Littlejohn 2008, this is a mistake. Thefallibilist does not have to deny that when we have knowledge, we have evidence that rulesout the possibility of being mistaken. Indeed, the fallibilist need not deny that when we haveknowledge, we have evidence that entails that our beliefs are correct. What the fallibilist hasto deny is that the possession of such evidence is a necessary precondition for coming to know.On a view such as Williamsons, having evidence that entails p is a consequence of comingto know p because in the wake of coming to know p, p is included in your evidence. This isvery different from saying that in order to come to know p, you must first have evidence thatentails p.12Rdl 2007 defends an infallibilist view of knowledge on which knowledge is just justified

belief. Most epistemologists would reject this view on the grounds that it leads to skepticismand that it delivers the wrong verdicts in Gettier cases. A response available to Rdl that isvery much in the spirit of his discussion is to say that Gettier cases are possible only if we

can have justified beliefs that fail to constitute knowledge where those beliefs are based onfallible grounds. Given his arguments, beliefs held on fallible grounds can neither constituteknowledge nor be justifiably held. The problem with his response is that he assumes thatGettier cases only arise when beliefs are held on fallible grounds. This is true for Gettierscases, but Feldman 1974 showed that there can be Gettier-like cases where beliefs are notbased on any false lemmas. The same is true for Ginet-inspired fake barn cases discussed byGoldman 1976.

5


6/29

I get things right, but you do not. According to Infallibilism, I cannot knowunless everyone who believes on our basis knows. But, you did not know the

next marble would be black. We can stipulate that you pulled the first whitemarble.

To block the objection, we have to deny Different Basis:

It is possible to know p even if you believe p on the same basis assomeone who mistakenly believes p (Same Basis).

McDowell will say that if you reject Different Basis, you have to also rejectBetter Reasons. If you accept Same Basis, your better reasons cannot make youbetter off, epistemically, because the qualities by virtue of which your reasonsare alleged to be better than the reasons you would have in a matching caseof error are beyond your ken. Similarly, he would say that if you deny BetterReasons, you also have to deny Good Enough. How could you have the same

reasons as someone else and only one of you have reasons that are good enough?If Same Reasons is true and the reasons in the case of hallucination are not goodenough to justify belief, those reasons cannot be good enough to justify beliefin the case of veridical experience. Thus, it seems we are led right back to theskeptical problem McDowell wanted to avoid. Once you deny Different Basis, itseems you have to deny the epistemological claims that could save us from theskeptic who would deny that we could ever come to have perceptual knowledge.To avoid these difficulties, we have to find where one of the skeptical argumentsgoes wrong. Below, I shall argue that Same Reasons does lead to skepticism.Our best hope is to find some flaw in McDowells epistemological argument forDisjunctivism.

3 The Refutation of MentalismAccording to Better Reasons, veridical perceptual experience provides betterreasons for your worldly beliefs than subjectively indistinguishable hallucina-tion. Why think that? Because this anti-mentalist argument is sound:

(1) If I know non-inferentially that I have hands, my evidence in-cludes the proposition that I have hands.

(2) If my evidence includes the proposition that I have hands, I havehands.

(3) The fact that I have hands does not supervene upon facts aboutmy mental states.

(C) Thus, if I can know non-inferentially that I have hands, it is pos-sible for two individuals to differ in the reasons they have for theirbeliefs even if their respective experiences are indistinguishablethe proposition that I have hands is not evidence that my hand-less non-factive mental duplicates have.

(4) I can know non-inferentially that I have hands.

6


7/29

(C2) Thus, it is possible for two individuals to differ in the reasonsthey have for their beliefs even if their respective experiences are

indistinguishable.

In support of (1), I shall argue that:

If you know p non-inferentially, p is part of your evidence (IKSE).

In support of (2), I shall argue for:

If p is part of your evidence, p is true (FactivityE).

In support of (3), I will say little. Moore was right, hands are the sorts of thingswe meet in space. In support of (4), I shall also say little. Maybe we cannot knownon-inferentially that we have hands. The scope of non-inferential knowledgemight not be this broad. It is broad enough, however, for our purposes. To

show that Better Reasons is true, we only have to show that the scope of non-inferential knowledge is broad enough that there are some propositions you canknow directly in the case of veridical experience that cannot be known in thecase of subjectively indistinguishable hallucination. Since the mentalists have todeny Better Reasons, an argument for Better Reasons is an argument against thementalist view. Given the shape of the argument, it shows that Same Reasonscan be true only if we cannot have perceptual knowledge of the external world.

3.1 Facts and Evidence

According to FactivityE, evidence consists of true propositions.13 The linguistic

evidence does support the claim that evidence ascriptions are factive and a nat-ural explanation as to why these ascriptions are factive is that evidence consists

of facts, not attitudes or the contents of non-factive mental states irrespectiveof whether those states are accurate.

Consider:

Scarlet: Do they have solid evidence against Mustard?

Green: The prosecution thinks it does. Heres the evidence theyhave: that he was the last one to see the victim alive, that he liedabout his whereabouts on the night of the crime, that his fingerprintswere on the murder weapon, and that he wrote a letter containingdetails the police think only the killer could have known.

Scarlet: But, didnt you say that he wasnt the last person to seehim alive and his fingerprints couldnt have been on the weapon?

13

Some writers do deny that evidence is propositional. In Littlejohn (ms.), I offer furtherevidence that evidence is propositional and address arguments that are supposed to show thatevidence consists of propositional attitudes rather than propositions. In saying that evidenceis propositional, I do not mean to deny that facts can constitute evidence. If the reader thinksfacts just are true propositions, great. If the reader thinks that facts and true propositions aredistinct, the reader should know that I would be happy to say that evidence either consists offacts or true propositions.

7


8/29

Green: Thats right. He also didnt lie about his whereabouts andwasnt the last one to see him alive.

Greens remarks seem contradictory. In stating the facts of the case as he takesthem to be, it appears that he contradicts his claims about the prosecutionsevidence. If evidence ascriptions were non-factive, Greens remarks should beperfectly coherent. Ascribing evidence and denying that the propositions as-cribed as evidence are true would be akin to ascribing false beliefs.

His remarks here seem defective as well:

Scarlet: Do they have solid evidence against Mustard?

Green: People seem to think they do. Heres the evidence they have:that he was the last one to see the victim alive, that he lied abouthis whereabouts on the night of the crime, that his fingerprints wereon the murder weapon, and that he wrote a letter containing details

the police think only the killer could have known. That being said, Idont know if hes the last one who saw the victim alive and I dontknow if he lied.

There is nothing wrong with:

(1) The prosecution believes on reasonably solid evidence that Mus-tard was the killer, but I dont know if they are right. I want tohear Mustards side of things.

This, however, seems defective:

(2) The prosecution knows that Mustard was the killer, but I dontknow if they are right. I want to hear Mustards side of things.

That (2) is defective is further evidence that evidence ascriptions are factive inthe way knowledge ascriptions are. If evidence ascriptions were not factive, (2)should be no more problematic than (1).

Briefly, I want to consider an objection to FactivityE. Versions of the objec-tion have appeared in the literature as an objection to Williamsons claim thatyour knowledge consists of all and only what you know:

Your evidence includes p iff you know p (E=K).14

On one version of the objection, the problem with FactivityE is said to be thatit is incompatible with an intuitively plausible closure principle.15 On another,it is said that cases of mistaken belief cause trouble for FactivityE because thesecases force us to say implausible things about the evidential bases of beliefs.16

In their own ways, these objections all assume something in the neighborhoodof this principle:

14See Williamson 2000, pp. 197. In Littlejohn Forthcoming, I defend Williamson from anumber of his critics but argue that E=K does need revision.15Comesana and Kantin 2010.16See Conee and Feldman 2008, Goldman 2009, and Rizzieri Forthcoming.

8


9/29

If you justifiably believe p, p is a justifying reason of yours that canjustify further beliefs (Justified Basis).

These objections fail, but their failure is instructive.Lets start with an example:

I believe that nobody can enter my office (O for now) because I be-lieve that I have just locked the door (LD for now). Let us stipulatethat I have inferred (O) from (LD). I pushed the lock in and gave ita quick twist to the left, which usually does the trick; however, mylock is damaged and does not work. Hence, (LD) is false.17

Rizzieri says this about the example:

If Williamsons proposal that (E=K) is correct then (LD) cannotserve as an evidential ground for (O). This generates problems for

(E=K). The first difficulty is that it is very plausible that (LD) doespartially constitute my evidence for (O). After all, I am justified inbelieving (LD), (LD) supports (O), and an explicit inference from(LD) is my most immediate basis or ground for (O).18

Given the features of the case, he says it is difficult to deny that LD is evidencefor O because LD renders O more probable than it would have been otherwise.19

Adding to the difficulties facing E=K and FactivityE, Comesaa and Kantinallege that these theses are incompatible with an attractive closure principle:

If your belief in p is justified, you have sufficient justification forbelieving the obvious consequences of p and can justifiably believethese consequences if these beliefs are arrived at by means of com-

petent deduction (J-Closure).They say that if we assume that the proposition that p can justify you inbelieving something only if it is part of your evidence, E=K implies that thefollowing is true:

The proposition that p justifies you in believing that q only if youknows that p (E=K1).

They then they argue against E=K1 and E=K as follows:

[S]uppose that Terry is a recently envatted human. On the basisof an experience very much like the one that you have when youare facing a dog in your neighborhood, Terry believes that there

is a dog in her neighborhood. Of course, Terry doesnt know thatthere is a dog in her neighborhood (if only because it is false, letus suppose, but not only because of that), but she is still justified

17Rizzieri Forthcoming, pp. 2.18Forthcoming, pp. 3.19Forthcoming, pp. 3.

9


10/29

in believing it. She then deduces from that belief that there is anonhuman animal in her neighborhood. Isnt she thereby justified

in believing that there is a non-human animal in her neighborhood?J-Closure (and intuition) say Yes, E=K1 says No. But theproposition that there is a non-human animal in the neighborhoodis a lightweight implication of the proposition that there is a dog inthe neighborhood. Therefore, again, if E=K 1 is true then closurefails miserably.20

While there are reasons to doubt E=K, it is not because it commits you toFactivityE.

For the first case to constitute a counterexample to FactivityE, we have toassume:

(3) That I have just locked my door is evidence that nobody can

enter my office.

Assume that if p is evidence for q, the probability of q has to be higher on pthan it would have been otherwise. Given this assumption, (3) entails:

(4) Because I just locked my door, it is more probable than it wouldhave been otherwise that nobody could get into my office.

The problem is that (4) entails:

(5) I just locked my door.

The case is only a potential counterexample to FactivityE if (5) is false. Theargument just sketched shows that (5) entails (3). So, the objection toFactivityE comes to this. Those who accept FactivityE have to deny somethingfalse.21

20Comesana and Kantin 2010, pp. 453.21Chris Cloos noted that my response rests on the controversial claim that p is evidence

for q only if there is some explanatory connection between p and qs evidential probability.someone could say that it is possible for p to be evidence for q even if the probability of qon the total evidence is not increased by the addition of p. This worry is easily addressed.The objection to FactivityE assumed that evidence is evidence for something only if it raisesits probability. Suppose that this is not the only way for something to serve as evidence forsomething else. There has to be some necessary condition on evidential support for p to beevidence for q. It might be a highly disjunctive condition, but whatever that condition is, C isthat (possibly disjunctive) condition. Unless p is evidence for q entails q satisfies C, p is notevidence for q. To argue against Factivity, you have to start with a putative counterexamplein which (i) is true:

(i) p is evidence for q.

This entails:(iia) Because p, q satisfies C.

(iib) q satisfies C because p.

But, these entail:

(iii) p is true.

If (iii) is true, the example is not a potential counterexample to Factivity. If (iii) is false, (i) is

10


11/29

My response assumes because is factive. I have found that not everyone ishappy to grant me this assumption, but the linguistic evidence for the factivity

of because is solid.22 Consider:

(6) The colonists protested because the tea was taxed. Not onlythat, the tea was taxed.

(7) He knows that they are angry and confused protestors. Indeed,they are angry protestors.

(8) I have two tea members of the tea party living in my building.Indeed, I have precisely two. Im lucky not to have more.

You cannot reinforce entailments (e.g., in (6) and (7)). If you try, you endup with redundant conjunctions. You can reinforce pragmatically impartedinformation (e.g., in (8)).23

This seems contradictory and this seems to provide further support for thefactivity of because:

(9) The bolt snapped because there were too many people on thebridge, but nobody was on the bridge.

It would not be surprising that (9) is contradictory if these were equivalent:

(10) The bolt snapped because there were too many people on thebridge.

(11) There were too many people on the bridge. Thats why the boltsnapped.

These do seem to be equivalent. After all, it is contradictory to assert (10) and

(

11) or to assert (

10) and (11). Also, you cannot reinforce (10) with (11) orvice-versa.Finally, consider our first example. Suppose you were under the impression

that LD was true and so thought you had evidence that O was true. Supposeyou said as you were leaving the office:

(12) It is likely that nobody will get into the office because the dooris locked.

false, and so the example is not a potential counterexample to any claims about what it takesfor p to be evidence for q. Notice that the crucial move in the argument is the move from theclaim that something is evidence to the further claim that the thing that constitutes evidenceexplains something about what is supported by the evidence. If this works for evidence,it should work for other kinds of normative reasons as well. Any attempt to show that,say, normative reasons or justifying reasons consists of false propositions will fail because if

something has the status of a reason to believe or act, it has to explain something about thenormative properties of the belief or act in question. It might be something trivial (e.g., itmight explain why it is that the belief or act in question has something going for it), but eventrivial explanations require facts rather than false propositions.22Thanks to Trent Dougherty for raising the ob jection.23I owe this point to Stanley 2008 who credits it to Sadock 1978.

11


12/29

Later, we discover that the door had not locked. Looking back, we cannot saythat you knew (12) was true when you uttered it. Why not? You could have

had excellent evidence for (12). You believed (12). If because is not factive, itseems (12) could be true. The most natural explanation as to why you cannotsay you knew (12) was true is that (12) is false if the explanans proposition isfalse.24

In addition to the linguistic evidence, we can say this on behalf of FactivityE.Anything that constitutes evidence has to figure in explanations. If somethingconstitutes a reason to act, for example, it typically does so by explaining whyit is that there is something good about a prospective course of action. Ifsomething constitutes a reason to believe some proposition, it has to explainsomething about the kind of rational support there is for believing that propo-sition. It might do this by explaining why something believed is more likely thanit would have been otherwise given the antecedent evidence or it might do it insome entirely different way, but it has to explain some support fact or other.False propositions explain nothing. So, false propositions explain nothing aboutnormative standing. So, false propositions do not constitute normative reasonsfor action or belief.

3.2 Having Evidence

In the previous section, I argued that if my evidence includes the propositionthat I have hands, I have hands. To complete the anti-mentalist argument,I shall argue for two further claims. The first is that p is part of your evi-dence if you know p directly or non-inferentially. The second is that the scopeof non-inferential knowledge is broad enough that it includes some contingentpropositions about the external world, propositions the truth of which does not

depend entirely upon facts about any individuals non-factive mental states.In their recent work, Conee and Feldman have been willing to grant thatthere is a sense in which your evidence might include contingent worldly propo-sitions about your environment, but they also insist on drawing a distinctionbetween ultimate and intermediate evidence.25 Their view is that your in-

24Comesana and Kantins objection fails for essentially the same reasons. Their case is acounterexample to FactivityE only if we assume that Terrys belief that there is an animal inthe neighborhood is based on the justified belief that there is a dog in the neighborhood andthat the proposition that there is a dog in the neighborhood is part of Terrys evidence. Ifthis were so, then this would have to be true:

(13) That there is a dog in the neighborhood is a reason for Terry to believethat there is an animal in the neighborhood.

This entails:

(14) Because there is a dog in the neighborhood, Terry has a reason to believe

there is an animal in the neighborhood.

In turn, this entails:

(15) There is a dog in the neighborhood.

But, we were told that (15) is false. Otherwise, the example would not threaten FactivityE.If (15) is false, so is (13).25Conee and Feldman 2008, pp. 87.

12


13/29

termediate evidence might include such worldly propositions, but non-factivemental duplicates never have different ultimate evidence. They offer this char-

acterization of the notion of ultimate evidence:

Some philosophers have argued that only believed propositions canbe part of the evidence one has. Their typical ground for this claim isthat only believed propositions can serve as premises of arguments.Our view differs radically from this one. We hold that experiencescan be evidence, and beliefs are only derivatively evidence ... Experi-ence is our point of intersection with the worldconscious awarenessis how we gain whatever evidence we have.

Furthermore, all ultimate evidence is experiential. Believing a propo-sition, all by itself, is not evidence for its truth. Something at theinterface of your mind and the world your experiences serves to

justify belief in a proposition, if anything does. What we are callingyour ultimate evidence does this without needing any justificationin order to provide it.26

In another passage they say that a persons ultimate evidence is, evidence onehas for which one need not have evidence.27 They defend two claims aboutultimate evidence:

If p is part of your ultimate evidence, p is experiential (Experien-tiality).

If p is part of your ultimate evidence, p is a justifying reason thatyou do not need evidence for in order for p to have that status(Basicality).

I think there are different ways of interpreting Experientiality. Surely yourultimate evidence will include propositions that you know about experience onthe basis of introspection. The question is whether mentalists can also say thatthe propositions that are the contents of experience are themselves part of yourevidence. So, let us consider two versions of Mentalism. The first understandsExperientiality quite narrowly:

p is part of your ultimate evidence only if p is the content of someintrospective state that represents your experiences and not a contin-gent worldly proposition that is the content of an experience (NarrowExperientiality).

The second understands Experientiality more broadly:

If p is part of your ultimate evidence, p is either the content of anintrospective state or the content of an experience (Broad Experien-tiality).

26Conee and Feldman 2008, pp. 87-88.27Conee and Feldman 2008, pp. 87, fn. 5.

13


14/29

Problems arise for the mentalist view when combined with either Narrow orBroad Experientiality.

Recall the anti-mentalist argument from above. Suppose we modify it asfollows:

(1) I know non-inferentially that I have hands.

(2) If I know I have hands non-inferentially, I believe that I havehands, this belief is non-inferentially justified, and this belief istrue.

(3) If I believe that I have hands, this belief is non-inferentially justified, and this belief is true, then my evidence includes theproposition that I have hands.

(4) My evidence includes the proposition that I have hands.

(5) My evidence includes the proposition that I have hands only if Ihave hands.

(C) Thus, it is possible for two individuals to differ evidentially with-out differing mentallythe proposition that I have hands is notevidence that my handless mental duplicates have.

Is (1) plausible? It is a relatively weak anti-skeptical assumption. We mightquibble a bit about whether I can know non-inferentially that I have hands.Maybe all I know non-inferentially is that the facing surface of an object withthe shape of a human hand exists in space. This fact does not supervene uponanyones mental states, so modify the argument accordingly if you so desire.(2) is relatively uncontroversial. Now, suppose Broad Experientiality is true.The content of perceptual experience includes contingent worldly propositions

as evidenced by the fact that the veridicality conditions of such experiencesmake reference to facts external to us. The only way to block the argument isto deny Broad Experientiality.28

Mentalists are free to deny Broad Experientiality to try to save their view,but doing so comes at a cost. Consider an argument inspired by one of Pryors.29

Imagine we discovered that some people were wired in such a way that theyformed their beliefs about the external world by taking perceptual experienceat face value and others were wired in such a way that they formed beliefsabout present experience and arrived at their beliefs about the external world bymeans of inference. This seems to be the sort of thing that cognitive scientistscould discover, so let us imagine that they did discover this. Intuitively, we

28There is an interesting question as to whether the scope of non-inferential perceptualknowledge is limited to propositions that are part of the representational content of experience.

There are also interesting questions as to how to go about determining how broad therepresentational content of experience is. For an argument that the scope of perceptualknowledge is not limited to propositions that are themselves the contents of our perceptualexperiences, see Brewer 1999 and Millar 2000. As for the content of experience, I am notentirely sure that perceptual experience has a content, but I am not persuaded that thecontent of perceptual experience is quite so broad that it would include kind concepts.29See Pryor 2000. Feldman 2004 endorses the argument discussed here.

14


15/29

want to say that this psychological difference is just a psychological difference.These subjects all know the same range of propositions about the external world

provided that they end up with the same beliefs and end up reasoning in similarways (exclusive, of course, of the early transitions in thought). If this is rightand we assume Basicality, some of these subjects would have contingent worldlypropositions as part of their ultimate evidence. This would force us to rejectthe mentalist view. To save the view that combines mentalism and Basicality, itseems you have to reject Broad Experientiality, but the guiding intuition seemsto be that when it came to knowledge, the difference in these subjects wiring isirrelevant. So, if you deny that subjects could have non-inferential knowledge ofthe external world, it would seem that you would have to deny that they couldhave inferential knowledge of the external world. But, this is just to say thatmentalism forces us to deny that we could have perceptual knowledge of theexternal world.

This objection assumes Basicality and Experientiality. Mentalists are ofcourse free to deny Basicality, but if they do so, they have to say that p can fail tobe ultimate evidence of yours even if p is evidence and you do not need evidenceto treat it as such, believe it, reason from it, etc... It seems then that this wouldrob the notion of ultimate evidence of all interest. The difference betweenperception and introspection is a psychological difference, not a normative one.If they agree that claims about which psychological faculties (if any) deliverultimate evidence should be determined by normative considerations about whatcan be treated as a reason without the need for prior reasons, then they couldaccept Basicality if they accept skepticism. The obvious problem with thisoption is that it concedes everything to the external world skeptic. The moredamning problem is that the mentalists sold us out to the skeptics at so cheapa price. They have declared the external world skeptics victors on the grounds

that the beliefs we form in direct response to experience could be false.It should be clear now why the denial of Better Reasons leads to skepticism.The argument offered for Better Reasons neither assumed nor in any obvious wayimplied that you have to have an infallible basis for your belief to have perceptualknowledge. Instead, it sought to show that a consequence of having perceptualknowledge is that you acquire evidence consisting of the propositions you learnedthrough observation. Introspection is a source of evidence or reasons, no doubt,but so is perception. Because you can know a wider range of propositions onthe basis of perceptual experience than you can on the basis of introspection,Better Reasons is true.

3.3 From Better Reasons to Good Enough

Although there is some controversy as to whether evidence ascriptions are fac-tive, parties to the disagreement tend to agree that justification ascriptions arenot.30 I think this is a mistake. If justifying reasons are constituted by facts,

30One of the main reasons for this is that people share the sort of intuitions that Cohen1984 appeals to in his new evil demon argument against reliabilism. See Littlejohn 2009for a discussion of responses to Cohens attack on reliabilism and other forms of epistemic

15


16/29

justification ascriptions are factive:

You cannot justifiably believe p unless p is true (FactivityJ).

If the argument for FactivityJ is sound, whatever reasons you might have tobelieve something false in response to hallucination, those reasons are not goodenough to justify the mistaken belief. In this section, I shall argue from BetterReasons to Good Enough.

The following thesis enjoys widespread acceptance:

If you justifiably believe p, you have some justifying reason for be-lieving p and your belief is based on it (Proper Basis).

Those who deny Proper Basis have to say that it is possible for a belief to be justified even if it is not based on evidence. Anyone who denies Proper Basisfaces a dilemma. Either they have to say you do not need evidence for p to

justifiably believe it or they have to say that you have to have evidence butdont have to base your beliefs on it. The problem with the first option is thatif it is true, it is possible to justifiably believe p and have no reason to believep at all. Suppose that J-Closure is true. If you knew that q was a consequenceof p and deduced q from p, J-Closure says that you justifiably believe q. But,surely you have a reason to believe q if q is inferentially justified. Did you justget a reason from nothing? It seems not, but then it seems you had a reason tobelieve p. Should we say instead that justified belief doesnt have to be basedon evidence? I think not. We want to capture the intuition that someone whobelieves on the evidence is epistemically better off than if they just happen tohave evidence that supports what they would have believed anyway. As Pollockand Cruz put it:

One could have a good reason at ones disposal but never make theconnection. Suppose, for instance, that you are giving a mathemat-ical proof. At a certain point you get stuck. You want to derive aparticular intermediate conclusion, but you cannot see how to do it.In despair, you just write it down and think to youself, Thats gotto be true. In fact, the conclusion follows from two earlier lines bymodus ponens, but you have overlooked that. Surely, you are not

justified in believing the conclusion, despite tha fact that you haveimpeccable reasons for it at your disposal. What is lacking is thatyou do not believe the conclusion on the basis of those reasons.31

It makes little sense to endorse the standard view that doxastic justificationascriptions (i.e., ascriptions of the form, S justifiably believes p or Ss belief

that p is justified) entail propositional justification ascriptions (i.e., S has a justification for believing p or There is a justification for S to believe p)while allowing that that the propositional justification you have to have to have

externalism that deny that the justificatory status of a belief is determined entirely by factsthat supervene upon a subjects non-factive mental states.31Pollock and Cruz 1999, pp. 35.

16


17/29

justified beliefs might play no role in supporting your beliefs. If you are notgoing to use it, why would you have to have it on hand?

So, suppose Proper Basis is true. If your belief concerning p is justified,it is either inferentially justified or non-inferentially justified. Lets supposethe former. If p is non-inferentially justified, maybe your belief in p is baseddirectly on the fact or some factive mental state (e.g., seeing that p). Given theargument for FactivityE, it is obvious that such a belief can only be justified iftrue. The content of the belief and the justifying reason are the same.

Suppose your belief concerning p is inferentially justified. If your belief isinferentially justified, it is either based on propositions that entail p or propo-sitions that do not entail p. If the former, given the argument for FactivityE,you cannot justifiably believe p ifp.

What about cases of inferential belief based on non-entailing evidence? Ifthere can be false, justified beliefs, this is where we should expect to find them.This is precisely where Williamson thinks he has found them. In his discussionof perceptual error, he says:

In unfavorable circumstances, one fails to gain perceptual knowl-edge, perhaps because things are not the way they appear to be.One does not know that things are that way, and E = K excludesthe proposition that they are as evidence. Nevertheless, one still hasperceptual evidence, even if the propositions it supports are false.True propositions can make a false proposition probable, as whensomeone is skillfully framed for a crime of which she is innocent. Ifperceptual evidence in the case of illusions consists of true proposi-tions, what are they? The obvious answer is: the proposition thatthings appear to be that way. The mountain appears to be thatshape.32

There is reason to be skeptical. Consider:

If you and another subject both believe p on the basis of a justifyingreason, these will only be different justifying reasons if your justifyingreasons for believing p differ or there is some difference in your non-factive mental states (Same Basis).

The thought behind Same Basis is that your justifying reasons for believingsomething are not just justifying reasons (i.e., facts), they are the things youtreat as if they are reasons. What you treat as if it is a reason depends upon yourmental states rather than the facts. You believe p on the basis of non-entailingevidence, r. You are the non-factive mental duplicate of someone who believes pon the basis of r in a p-world. Are you also in a p-world? Yes. You both deduce qfrom p because you both know that q is an obvious consequence of p. Accordingto J-Closure, you both justifiably believe q. According to Same Basis, you bothbelieve q for the reason that p. According to Proper Basis, you justifiably believeq only if p is a justifying reason. But, Factivity says, this is true only if p is true.

322000, pp. 197.

17


18/29

So, yes, you are in a p-world. If p is non-inferentially justified, Proper Basissays that p is the justifying reason for believing p. FactivityE says that p must

be true. If p is inferentially justified and based on entailing evidence, FactivityEimplies that p is true. If p is inferentially justified and based on non-entailingevidence, p still turns out to be true. So, there are no false, justified beliefs andGood Enough must be true.

How would Williamson try to block the argument? Williamson can say thatyour evidence in the case of illusion consists of propositions about appearancesand say that this is the evidence the belief is based on. If he says this and alsoaccepts Same Basis, he has to say that our beliefs cannot be based on evidencethat consists of propositions about the external world. Either, this means thatour knowledge of the external world cannot justify our beliefs or we cannothave knowledge of the external world. He wouldnt want to say such things.So, should he deny Same Basis? To say that someone based her belief on p isto say, in part, that p is the reason for which she believes. The form such areason explanation takes should not depend upon whether the agents beliefsare true or false.33 A subjects reasons for believing are limited to what shetakes to support her beliefs, and it seems impossible for two subjects to differ interms of what they take to support their beliefs if these subjects are non-factivemental duplicates.

We know why Williamson thinks there can be false, justified beliefs. He says,Knowledge figures in the account primarily as what justifies, not as what getsjustified. Knowledge can justify a belief which is not itself knowledge, for thejustification relation is not deductive.34 He is right that the justification rela-tion is not deductive. You can justifiably believe p on the basis of non-entailingevidence. This is compatible with FactivityJ. The justification of a belief de-pends in part upon what a belief is based on, but also upon what the belief

can do for you. A belief is not justified if it cannot provide reasons for furtherbeliefs. True beliefs based on sufficiently strong but non-entailing evidence canprovide you with (genuine) reasons for further beliefs, but false beliefs based onthe same evidence cannot. This is why there cannot be false, justified beliefs.The mistake Williamson makes is in thinking that the justificatory standing ofa belief is fixed by what the belief stands on, its basis or the evidence that sup-ports it. The justificatory standing of a belief depends, in part, upon whetherit stands on a proper basis, but also upon whether it can shoulder its burden inproviding support for further beliefs. Given the arguments for FactivityE, onlytrue beliefs can do that. Given the arguments for FactivityJ, there is no reasonto think that only beliefs based on entailing evidence can do that. So, whileWilliamsons remark that the justification relation is not deductive is technicallycorrect, it is misleading.

33Rizzieri Forthcoming stresses this point in his discussion. Williams 1981 and Dancy 1995say essentially the same thing concerning reasons for action.342000, pp. 9.

18


19/29

4 Defeat

In trying to explain how perceptual knowledge is possible, McDowell rejectsSame Reasons and argues that Disjunctivism is needed to explain Better Rea-sons. Nothing could be a reason that contributes to the justificatory standingof your belief unless that reason is part of your basis for believing. For reasonswe have touched on, having such a reason requires having a kind of unmedi-ated, unbroken mental contact with the facts you come to know via perceptualexperience. Conee objects that Disjunctivism could not explain Better Reasonsbecause any such explanation would run afoul of the following principle:

A subjects justification for a belief is not stronger than a secondsubjects justification for the same belief, if their respective justifi-cations are prone to being equally well defeated by the same defeaters(Defeat).35

Conees objection fails. He thinks veridical perceptual experience and subjec-tively indistinguishable hallucination are equally well defeated by the same de-featers because they are subjectively indistinguishable. If his objection is sound,it shows that if two conscious experiences are indistinguishable, the reasons theyprovide for your beliefs are equally strong and these experiences will justify thesame beliefs to the same degree. Consider two theses about indiscriminabilityand justification:

TransitivityI: (x)(y)(z)[(Ixy& Iyz) Ixz)].

TransitivityJ: (x)(y)(z)[(Jxy&Jyz) Jxz)].

According to TransitivityI, a and c must be indiscriminable or indistinguishablefor you if you cannot distinguish a from b and cannot distinguish b from c.According to TransitivityJ, if a and b justify the same (i.e., justify the same

35Conee 2007, pp. 19. If Defeat says that two reasons defeated by the same defeater cannotdiffer in strength, the principle is not very plausible. A full house is stronger than a paireven if four aces would beat both hands. On a more charitable reading, Defeat says that the

justification provided by two conscious experiences is equally strong if these justifications areliable to defeat by all the same defeaters. This is more plausible, but still hardly self-evident.It is not obvious that the strength of a reason can be measured in terms of what can defeat it.Forget about reasons for a moment and think about boxers. Nobody can defeat Mustard ina boxing match. Apart from Mustard, nobody can defeat White or Plum. White and Plumcannot box against each other because they share gloves. Plum and Green cannot box eachother because they share trunks. No one can box without both gloves and trunks. Supposeyou have debts that you can only repay if you come into some quick money. The only wayto come into some quick money is to set up a boxing match for tomorrow night. You have tobet on the boxer you send to the ring and you manage White and Plum. You do not knowwhether the opponent will be Green, Mustard, or someone else. You know the fight will nottake place if you try to send Plum up against Green, so there is stronger reason to send inWhite. While White and Plum would lose to the same boxers, you have stronger reason tosend White in. One lesson to take from this is that if reasons are like boxers, strength cannotsimply be measured in terms of who could defeat the reason or boxer you have. Surely somereasons are like boxers. Reasons to pick between boxers are reasons and they behave a bitlike boxers.

19


20/29

beliefs to the same degree) and b and c justify the same, a and c must justifythe same as well.

TransitivityI is false. Suppose a, b, and c are perceptual experiences youhave while looking at three different paint chips in good viewing conditions. Itseems possible for a and b to be indiscriminable, b and c to be indiscriminable,even if you can discriminate a from c. If these chips differ only slightly, youmight be unable to distinguish the first from the second and the second fromthe third even if you can discriminate the first from the third by sight.36 Whatgoes for the chips goes for the perceptual experiences of the chips. Althoughit seems that TransitivityI is false, TransitivityJ is true. For TransitivityJ tobe false, there would have to be some proposition, p, such that the degrees towhich a and c justified belief in p differed even though both a and c justifiedbelief in p to the same degree that b does. This is impossible.

With this in mind, I shall argue that Conee cannot use Defeat to show thatDisjunctivism cannot explain Better Reasons. His objection assumes:

(1) (x)(y)(Ixy Jxy).

Let me introduce a further assumption:

(2) (x)(y)( Ixy Jxy).

The justification for (2) is that in discriminating between two things, you canknow that these two things are distinct.37 If you can discriminate between aand c, you will have stronger reasons for believing that you are undergoing awhile undergoing a than you will have for believing that you are undergoingsome experience you can knowingly discriminate from a (e.g., c).

If TransitivityI is false, we can coherently suppose that a is indiscriminablefrom b, b is indiscriminable from c, but you can discriminate between a andc. (1) entails that a and b justify the same beliefs to the same degree. It alsoentails that b and c justify the same beliefs to the same degree. It follows byTransitivityJ that a and c justify the same beliefs to the same degree. But, if (2)is correct, this contradicts the further assumption that a and c are experiencesthat you can discriminate between. The most obvious way to avoid this con-tradiction is to deny (1). If (1) is false, Conees Defeat principle is no threat toBetter Reasons. His objection was that McDowells view implied that it is pos-sible for indistinguishable states to provide different reasons for belief, reasonsthat differed in strength. His objection assumed that indistinguishable statescan be defeated by precisely the same considerations and that states that can bedefeated by precisely the same considerations cannot offer reasons that differ instrength. We know now that these assumptions cannot both be correct. Either

the reasons provided by two indistinguishable states are not defeated by thevery same considerations or the reasons provided by two states can be defeatedby the same considerations even if these states provide different reasons.

36For discussion, see Williamson 1990, pp. 237-44.37See Williamson 1990.

20


21/29

There is a deeper problem with Conees objection. It is tempting to thinkthat Better Reasons and Good Enough are only true if the reasons we have in

the case of perceptual knowledge are stronger than the reasons we have in casesof hallucination. While we do have stronger reasons in the case of veridicalperception, it is also important to remember that strength of epistemic positionis not simply a function of the strength of reasons to believe. Strength ofposition depends upon how strong your reasons are and what those reasons areup against.

5 The Epistemological Argument for Disjunctivism

Lets take stock. Why does veridical experience provide better reasons thanthe reasons provided by a subjectively indistinguishable hallucination? Be-cause anything you know non-inferentially is part of your evidence only true

propositions constitute evidence. Since the scope of things that you know non-inferentially in the case of veridical perception is greater than the scope of thingsyou can know non-inferentially when you undergo a subjectively indistinguish-able hallucination, you have better reasons when you veridically perceive howthings are. If it looks as if there is a cat in the corner, you can know non-inferentially that a cat is there if there is a cat. You cannot if there is no cat.That there is a cat in the corner is a better reason to believe there is a catin the room than the fact that it looks to you that there is a cat there. Onereason entails that there is a cat in the room, the other does not. In the caseof veridical perception, you have both reasons. In the case of hallucination,you have only one of these reasons. The argument for FactivityJ gives us anargument for Good Enough. If you take experience at face value in the case ofveridical perception, there seems to be no reason not to hold such beliefs. If

you take experience at face value in the case of hallucination, there seems to bea reason not to hold such beliefs. These beliefs lack a proper basis and so suchbeliefs cannot provide us with reasons to form further beliefs. Conee tried toshow that nothing could explain how you could have better reasons by virtueof having veridical experiences, but his argument from Defeat failed.

McDowell might agree with some of this, but he will say that this does not gofar enough. Nothing in the arguments for Good Enough or Better Reasons toldus anything about the nature of perceptual experience. If the traditional viewof experience is left in place, he would say all is lost. Remember that McDowellwanted to hold onto the internalist thought that your epistemic standing cannotbe constituted even partially by matters blankly external to you. Why not?Because, he says, such matters are beyond your ken and what is beyond yourken cannot make any difference to your epistemic standing.

His reasoning seems to be this:

(1) If something is blankly external to your subjectivity, it is beyondyour ken.

(2) If something is beyond your ken, it cannot make a difference to

21


22/29

your epistemic standing.

(3) Thus, if something is blankly external to your subjectivity, itcannot make a difference to your epistemic standing.

If we combine Better Reasons and Good Enough with a traditional view ofexperience on which there is no psychological differences that distinguishes casesof hallucination and veridical perception, the thought is that the veridicality ofan experience and the conditions necessary for the experience to be veridicalare blankly external to your subjectivity, they are beyond your ken, and theycannot make a difference to your epistemic standing. Good Enough tells usthat given the reasons that bear on your beliefs in the case of hallucination, youshould not believe. If your beliefs are of the same normative standing in thegood case and bad, your reasons cannot be good enough in the good case. Weare led right back to the skeptical conclusion that we cannot have perceptualknowledge.

In response to this argument, I shall argue that (2) is false. Indeed, (2) isfalse even if McDowells internalist thought is perfectly sound. Once we see this,we can see why we have no real reason to accept (1). If we do not accept (1),we need not accept the argument for Different Basis. So, if we reject (1) and(2), we can opt for a view on which Better Reasons and Good Enough are truewhile rejecting both Different Basis and Infallibilism. This allows us to avoidthe skeptical problems that arise for McDowells view as well as the mentalistview.

McDowell is right to deny that something inaccessible to you can conferupon you an epistemic benefit. Consider some examples. Suppose someonedoes something there is reason not to do. Suppose that there happens also tobe reason to do it. Bernie shoots a kid carrying a weapon (that is something

there is a pro tanto reason not to do), but doesnt know that the kid is carrying aweapon. Maybe the kid was going to use that weapon to attack a bunch of people(perhaps thats a pro tanto reason to shoot the kid). Since this has nothing to dowith Bernies reasons for shooting, it is hard to see how facts about what the kidwas carrying and what the kid planned to do with his weapon could be cited to

justify his deeds. Even if Bernie were made aware of the kids weapon, if Bernie isshooting the kid just because he hates kids it is hard to see how these facts could

justify his conduct. To justifiably act against a reason, it seems that it is notenough that there is overriding reason that happens to be out there somewhere.It seems that this reason to act has to be the reason for which the subject actsif that reason is going to be the reason in virtue of which some other agentsdeeds are going to have a moral standing superior to the standing of Berniesdeeds. The reasons that count in favor of acting seem to contribute positively

to moral standing only if they play some motivational role. They cannot playthat motivational role, however, if they are beyond the subjects ken. Indeed,one argument for the claim that considerations beyond your ken cannot conferany justification is predicated on the assumption that considerations can only

justify when they play some motivational role. If Bernies reasons for shootingwere not the reasons for which he shot, those reasons seem to do nothing to

22


23/29

justify his action even if he is aware of them but is motivated instead wholly bymalice. We do not need practical examples to make the point. One lesson you

might take from BonJours clairvoyant examples is precisely that considerationsthat are inaccessible to you cannot be reasons that justify forming beliefs.

This much seems right. It seems to be the sort of thing that might leadMcDowell to say that there is something a subject in the good case is cog-nizant of that explains why a subject in this case ends up with beliefs better

justified than beliefs formed in the bad case. The reasons that count againstacting, however, can contribute negatively to the normative standing of an ac-tion without playing any motivational role. Moreover, the reasons that countagainst acting can contribute to normative standing of an action even if theagent is non-culpably ignorant of them. Think about cases where someone isimprisoned for a crime that we later discover that they did not commit. In thewake of this discovery, we discover that we have a duty of reparation and mustcompensate the victim. Such reparative duties are, however, not mere duties ofbeneficence. Such reparative duties should leave the victim better off than theywere, but unlike duties of beneficence the duty is one that arises between thevictim and the subject(s) that harmed the victim. These duties can exist whenthe parties responsible for imprisoning the victim were non-culpably ignorant ofthe fact that the accused was innocent. (Just think about cases where reliableeyewitnesses came forward to suggest that the victim was guilty and it was onlylater developments in forensic science that exonerated the person imprisoned.)These duties only exist when the agent acted against some genuine reason thatcontributed negatively to the normative standing of the original act. (Other-wise, helping the wrongly accused would not be a response to some past wrongand would be a mere duty of beneficence.) If this is right, the act of puttingthe innocent victim away and forcing them to suffer the hardships of prison

was wrongful and wrongful for reasons that all relevant parties could have beennon-culpably ignorant of.Examples like these suggest that there is an important asymmetry between

reasons for belief or action and reasons against.38 Even if reasons for believing oracting cannot contribute to normative standing unless the subject is cognizantof them, reasons against can contribute negatively to normative standing whenthe subject is not cognizant of them. McDowell himself seems to concede thismuch if he accepts Better Reasons and accepts that subjects in the bad caseare in no position to realize that their reasons are defective. Since comparativenormative standing is a function of both the reasons for and reasons against,there is a serious lacuna in McDowells argument for Disjunctivism. Why? Well,suppose there are reasons not to believe p on the basis of how things look whenits looking as if p is due to hallucination. It could be that beliefs in the good

case are comparatively better off even if there is not something internal to thesubjects experience that is distinctive of the good case. The disparity is dueentirely to reasons not to believe that are present only in the bad case that makebeliefs formed in that case defective.

38For further discussion of this asymmetry, see Gardner 2007.

23


24/29

Notice that there is a way of accomodating the internalist point about rea-sons to believe. None justify if they are beyond your ken. However, if he must

concede that reasons not to believe can do their work by making it wrongful tobelieve even if they are beyond the subjects ken, we can explain the differencein epistemic standing between the good case and bad in terms of this differencein the reasons not to believe. We could say, if we wanted, that there were thesame reasons to believe in these cases. Thus, it seems that the right to believedoes not depend upon the possession of reasons that entail that the belief inquestion is true. One might have such reasons on hand, say, in the case ofnon-inferentially justified belief, but there is no necessary connection betweenrightly held belief and entailing evidence.

I think McDowell has to grant this point, which is that reasons beyond yourken can contribute to your normative standing if those reasons are reasonsagainst. Why? According to McDowell, the difference between the good caseand bad cannot be a difference just in the truth value of what is believed, italso has to be a normative difference. Now, it seems that the difference betweenthe good case and bad is beyond the ken of the subject in the bad case even onMcDowells view. Surely, if you are undergoing a hallucination that you cannotdistinguish from a veridical perception, that you are hallucinating is beyondyour ken and it makes a difference to the normative standing of belief. It doesnot follow from the fact that the differences between the good and bad case arebeyond the subject in the bad case that it is beyond the subject in the goodcase. Indeed, it would seem on McDowells view that the difference cannot bebeyond the ken of the subject in the good case because if it were, the subjectwould not have perceptual knowledge and so would not be in the good case.But, McDowell assumes that we can have this knowledge, tries to describe theconditions under which we can have it, and concludes that this requires that it

is possible for some subject to know p and for the fact that p is a fact to be onethat is not beyond this subjects ken.While it is great fun to talk McDowellese, it is worth stopping for a moment

to try to work out what it is that we have been saying. It might be helpful totry to say in plain English what it is for something to be beyond your ken andwhat it is for something to be blankly external to your subjectivity. Given theargument sketched above, we know that McDowell assumes that if somethingis beyond your ken, it is something that you cannot know. So, we can saythis much: if you do know something non-inferentially, it is not beyond yourken. What does it actually mean to say that something is blankly externalto your subjectivity? One interpretation that seems plausible is given by vanCleveq is blankly external to your subjectivity iff a complete description ofyour psychological states neither entails q nor q.39

In my argument for Better Reasons, I assumed, as McDowell did, that wedo have direct or non-inferential knowledge of the external world and then triedto describe the conditions under which this is possible. This is possible, I said,only if Better Reasons is true. McDowell insists that this is possible only if

39van Cleve 2004, pp. 486.

24


25/29

Disjunctivism is true. We know that (2) cannot support the argument for Dis-junctivism because (2) is false and the revised version of (2) does not seem to

support it. He could appeal to (1), but if my translation from McDowellese toEnglish is correct, all that (1) really says is that if some fact is not entailed bya full description of your psychology, it is not something that you could knownon-inferentially. What reason could there be to think that? The internalistthought does not support that, it supports the thought that nothing beyondyour ken can confer any epistemic benefit upon you. Ive granted that. Sincethere seems to be no reason for someone who accepts what is right about theinternalist thought that supports a modified version of (2) to accept (1), I seelittle hope for the epistemological argument for Disjunctivism. Yes, McDow-ell could say that in the course of arguing for Better Reasons, I helped myselfto the assumption that we can have non-inferential knowledge of the externalworld arrived at by taking experience at face value and that I have no rightto help myself to that assumption, but it is worth remembering that I am en-gaged in the very same project he is. We both assume that we can have thissort of knowledge and then try to describe the conditions under which it ispossible. And while it would be possible if by some miracle we had the sort ofpsychologies that we hypersensitive to the facts that there are changes in ourpsychologies whenever the facts change, there is no reason yet to think that wecannot have this knowledge if the traditional view of experience is correct. Ifwe do not accept (1), we have no reason to accept the problematic claim thatwhenever we have knowledge, we believe on the sort of basis that itself rulesout the possibility of error. So, without (1), there is no argument from BetterReasons and Good Enough to Different Basis and we do not incur the costlycommitment to Infallibilism.

6 Conclusion

In the opening, we looked at an argument for the mentalist view. That argumentwas no good. McDowell would say that the problem was the way in which itassumed that if it looks to you as if p, you have the same reasons whether youveridically perceive that p is so or are hallucinating. This leads him to say thatthe nature of the psychological states by virtue of which it looks to you as if pdepend, in part, upon whether the conditions necessary for veridical experienceobtain. Myself, I think you do not have the same reasons in both cases becausein only one case do you have a genuine reason in mind. Reasons are facts. Takethe facts away and leave the attitudes in place, you think you have reasons thatdo not exist.

The mentalists worry, quite reasonably, that the reasoning leads to Disjunc-tivism lead to Infallibilism. McDowells view simply trades in one set of skepticaldifficulties for another. They reject the epistemological argument for Disjunc-tivism because they insisting that the difference between the good and bad caseis a difference in what is known, not a normative difference or a difference in thereasons that bear on whether to believe. While they are right that not every dif-

25


26/29

ference between cases of knowledge and ignorance corresponds to a difference innormative standing, beliefs formed in response to hallucination have a different

normative standing than beliefs formed in response to veridical experience.We avoid the skeptical worries that arise for the mentalists and McDowell

once we realize that Better Reasons and Different Basis do not stand or falltogether. McDowell thought they did, but the argument that was supposed toshow this rested on a reading of the internalist thought (i.e., the thought thatmatters beyond your ken cannot contribute to your epistemic standing) thathe himself could not consistently maintain. Once that thought was properlyunderstood as the view that nothing beyond your ken can provide an epistemicbenefit, we saw that there was no argument from Better Reasons to DifferentBasis. We avoid the skeptical problems that arise for mentalism by helpingourselves to Better Reasons. We avoid the skeptical problems that arise forMcDowell by denying Different Basis.

I have not offered any positive characterization of the nature of perceptualexperience here and have not provided an account that explains how it is that ourperceptual beliefs are justified. What I have done is defended a package of claimsthat I think any plausible account of perceptual knowledge will accommodateand argued that this package of claims does not commit us to any particularlycontentious views about the nature of perceptual experience. Briefly, here is asketch of a view of perceptually justified belief. Why are our beliefs not justifiedin the case of hallucination? Because beliefs formed in response to hallucinationwill pass off non-reasons or counterfeit evidence as if it is genuine. So, there isa reason not to have such beliefs. (Remember, J-Closure tells us that a belief is

justified if the beliefs we infer from it can be justifiably held, and this requiresthat the belief can provide reasons for this further belief.) If there is a reasonnot to hold these beliefs and no reason to hold these beliefs, holding such beliefs

is a matter of believing against an undefeated reason. Just as you ought neveract against an undefeated reason, you ought never believe against an undefeatedreason. Why are our beliefs justified in the case of veridical experience? If ourbeliefs were not justified, there would be an undefeated reason not to have them.What could that reason be? The belief does not fail to pass of genuine reasonsto support further beliefs. The belief is not formed in such a way as to indicatethat the believer is not sufficiently concerned with the truth or that the believeris irresponsible in any way. Nothing seems to stand in the way of their being

justified. So, are they justified? Sure, why not? They count as justified triviallyif they are not wrongful in any way. The justified just is the permissible, afterall. They are not epistemically wrongful in either of the only two ways I canthink of for a belief to be wrongfully held (i.e., they pass of counterfeit reasonsas if they are genuine or are held in such a way as to indicate that the believer

has failed in her responsibilities as someone pursuing the truth).40

40Thanks to Chris Cloos, Michael Conboy, Earl Conee, Trent Dougherty, Leo Iacano, Dun-can Pritchard, and John Turri for written comments and discussion. Parts of an earlier draftof this paper were presented at Kings College London and the University of Edinburgh andI am grateful to audiences at both places for their questions and comments.

26


27/29

References

1. Brewer, Bill 1999. Perception and Reason. New York: Oxford UniversityPress.

2. Byrne, Alex and Heather Logue. 2008 Either/Or, in A. Haddock andF. Macpherson, Disjunctivism: Perception, Action, and Know ledge. NewYork: Oxford University Press.

3. Cohen, Stewart. 1984. Justification and Truth. Philosophical Studies 46:279-95.

4. Conee, Earl. 2007. Disjunctivism and Anti-Skepticism. PhilosophicalIssues 17: 16-36.

5. Conee, Earl and Richard Feldman. 2004. Evidentialism. New York: Ox-

ford University Press.6. Conee, Earl and Richard Feldman. 2008. Evidence, In Q. Smith, Epis-

temology: New Essays. (New York: Oxford University Press): 83-104.

7. Comesaa, Juan. 2005. Justified versus Warranted Perceptual Belief: ACase Against Disjunctivism. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research:367-83.

8. Comesaa, Juan and Holly Kantin. 2010. Is Evidence Knowledge? Phi-losophy and Phenomenological Research 80: 447-54.

9. Dodd, Dylan. 2007. Why Williamson Should Be a Sceptic. The Philo-sophical Quarterly 57: 635-49.

10. Fantl, Jeremy and Matt McGrath. 2009. Knowledge in an UncertainWorld. New York: Oxford University Press.

11. Feldman, Richard. 1974. An Alleged Defect in Gettier Counter-Examples.Australasian Journal of Philosophy 52: 68-92.

12. Feldman, Richard. 2004. Foundational Beliefs and Empirical Possibilities.Philosophical Issues 14: 132-48.

13. Gardner, John. 2007. Offenses and Defenses. New York: Oxford Univer-sity Press.

14. Goldman, Alvin. 1976. Discrimination and Perceptual Knowledge. Jour-nal of Philosophy 73: 77191.

15. Goldman, Alvin. 2009. Williamson on Knowledge and Evidence, inP. Greenough and D. Pritchard, Williamson on Knowledge (New York:Oxford University Press): 73-92.

16. Huemer, Michael. 2006. Phenomenal Conservatism and the InternalistIntuition. American Philosophical Quarterly 43: 147-58.

27


28/29

17. Littlejohn, Clayton. 2008. From E = K to Scepticism? The PhilosophicalQuarterly 58: 679-84.

18. Littlejohn, Clayton. 2009. The Externalists Demon. Canadian Journalof Philosophy 39: 399-435.

19. Littlejohn, Clayton. Forthcoming. Knowledge and Evidence. Erkenntnis.

20. Littlejohn, Clayton. The Nature of Epistemic Justification. [Manuscript]

21. McDowell, John. 1998. Criteria, Defeasibility, and Knowledge, in hisMeaning, Knowledge, and Reality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UniversityPress.

22. McDowell, John, 2008. The Disjunctive Conception of Experience as Ma-terial for a Transcendental Argument, in A. Haddock and F. Macpherson,

Disjunctivism: Perception, Action, and Knowledge. New York: OxfordUniversity Press.

23. McDowell, John. 2010. Tyler Burge on Disjunctivism. PhilosophicalExplorations 13: 243-55.

24. Millar, Alan. 2000. The scope of perceptual knowledge. Philosophy 75:7388.

25. Neta, Ram and Pritchard, Duncan. 2007. McDowell and the New EvilGenius. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 74: 381 396.

26. Pollock, John and Joseph Cruz. 1999. Contemporary Theories of Knowl-edge. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield.

27. Pryor, James. 2000. The Skeptic and the Dogmatist. Nous 34: 517-49.

28. Rizzieri, Aaron. Forthcoming. Evidence Does not Equal Knowledge.Philosophical Studies.

29. Rdl, Sebastian. 2007. Self-Consciousness. Cambridge, MA: HarvardUniversity Press.

30. Sadock, Jerrold. 1978. On Testing Conversational Implicature. Syntaxand Semantics 9: Pragmatics: 281-97.

31. Silins, Nico. 2005. Deception and Evidence. Philosophical Perspectives19: 375-404.

32. Stanley, Jason. 2008. Knowledge and Certainty. Philosophical Issues 18:33-55.

33. Van Cleve, James. 2004. Externalism and Disjunctivism, in R. Schantz,The Externalist Challenge (de Gruyter): 481-95.

28


29/29

34. Williams, Bernard. 1981. Moral Luck. New York: Cambridge UniversityPress.

35. Williamson, Timothy 1990. Identity and Discrimination. Malden, MA:Blackwell.

36. Williamson, Timothy 2000. Knowledge and its Limits. New York: OxfordUniversity Press.

29

Documents

DisjoinDisjunctoct2010