Philosophy 5550


Seminar 3 - Huemer's Foundationalism


 Part 2: Michael Huemer's Replies

Michael Huemer's “Phenomenal Conservatism über Alles"

1. What Are Seemings?


1.1 Against Analysis

    Here Mike appeals to the difficulty of getting analyses that are absolutely correct.  In many cases, however, one can put forward analyses that are surely an approximation to a sound analysis, or one can see out necessary conditions that are not jointly sufficient. In the case of the concept of knowledge, for example, Mike appears to view an analysis according to which knowledge as justified, true, belief plus a fourth condition as fairly close to the truth, and certainly he holds that being believed, being justified, and being true, are necessary conditions of being known.  So why may it not be possible to offer an approximate analysis of the concept of seemings, or to offer necessary conditions?

    Mike might respond that a state of its seeming to one that something is the case, unlike a state of one knowing that something is the case, is a basic psychological state, and that in the case of concepts of basic psychological states, it is not possible to offer an approximate analysis, or even necessary conditions for the truth of propositions involving such concepts.

    But this, surely, is a highly controversial claim. For one thing, if it is true, then reductive physicalism does not make it out of the starting blocks, since if mental states are to be reduced to states involving only the properties, relations, and fundamental entities postulated by physics, one needs an analysis of what it is to believe that something is the case, to desire that that something is the case, to entertain some thought, and so on. If something like a functionalist account cannot be giving of believing, desiring, and thinking, then reductive physicalism is dead in the water.

1.2 The Disposition to Believe

    Mike notes here that its seeming to one that p is true cannot be analyzed in terms of the idea of one’s being in a counterfactual state to the effect that one would believe that p was true if certain things were different, since one can, for example, be disposed to believe something because one would like it to be true.  There are, however, slightly more demanding analyses of the epistemic sense of “seems”, in which one refers not just to a disposition to believe that has any basis of any sort, but to a disposition that is based, for example, upon justified beliefs that one has.

1.3 One Sense of “Appear”

    Here Mike challenges the idea that there are at least three senses of“appears”and“seems", including a phenomenal sense: “I have proposed a single sense of these words, in which they refer to a kind of propositional attitude, a sort of mental state representing the world as being a certain way” (329-30). 

Comment

      Notice that in describing his view, Mike uses the term“representing,”a term that he explains only in terms of different relations, such as those involved in pictures, in sentences, beliefs, and experiences.

    Moreover, in the case of visual experiences, if one accepts the existence of qualia, as Mike does, then there seems to be good reason for holding that there is a visual field consisting of color patches standing in spatial relations to one another, and that, just as with ordinary maps, there is a mapping relation from a person's visual field into the relevant part of the external world.

Mike on the Phenomenal Sense of “Appears”

     With regard to Mike’s rejection of the idea that there is a phenomenal sense of “appears”, consider the following sentence:

“I agree that X certainly appears green, but it seems that X is not green, given that the conditions of illumination are abnormal.”

Doesn't this sentence make sense?  But how could it make sense if there weren't a phenomenal sense of“appears”in sentences such as "X appears green”that contrasts with an epistemic or evidential sense of“seems”in sentences such as“It seems that X is not green?

     I also think that in the case of sentences involving the term“appears", the precise form of the sentence can be significant. Consider the following three sentences. Do they all have the same meaning?

“X appears green”

“X appears to be green”

“It appears that X is green”

The third of these sentences explicitly refers to a relation to the proposition that X is green, and I think it is natural to construe that sentence as involving an epistemic sense of“appears". I suggest that in the first sentence, on the other hand, it is natural to view“appears”as having a phenomenal sense in which it refers to a quality of one's present visual experience. Then, as regards the second sentence, it seems to me that it can sometimes be assimilated to the first sentence, and sometimes to the third.

    As support for the claim about the first sentence, consider a case where someone is looking at a red object under normal indoor lighting, and when asked how the object appears, says, “It appears red".  The lights are then dimmed very dramatically, and when the person is asked how the object looks then, says,“It appears gray". Suppose then that you ask the person,“So it now seems to you that the object is gray?”  Mightn't the person very well reply,“The object looks gray, it appears gray, but it still seems to me that it is red"?

    Finally, suppose that the lights are all turned off, and the person is asked how the object appears then.  What is the person likely to say? Isnt the person likely to reply that in the dark the object doesn't appear any way at all, since he or she cannot see the object?  But if so, can't one conclude that sentences like“X appears green are referring to a person's visual experiences?

    Or consider the possibility of a magic potion that when rubbed on an object, X, makes X invisible.  If one were asked whether it now seemed to you that X was invisible, one would surely be happy to answer that it did. But if someone said,“X appeared green, but X now appears invisible.” Wouldn't one say that X now doesn't appear any way at all?  But if so, then the explanation must surely be that“X appears green”refers to a causal relation between X and ones visual experience, and when X is invisible, X no longer gives rise to any feature of ones visual experience, so X doesnt appear any way at all.    

Mike on the Comparative Sense of “Appears”

    Mike also rejects Chisholm's claim that there is a comparative sense of“appears", according to which“X appears green”says, in effect, what could be said by

“X appears the way green things appear under normal conditions”.

But the latter sentence itself involves the term“appears", and is surely intelligible.  It invites, however, the following question, “And how do green things appear under normal conditions?” One answer to the latter question is that they appear qualitatively green, or that they appear green*.

    On pages 330-1, Mike discusses a case, mentioned by Roderick Chisholm, in which a round table appears elliptical, and which can be used to support the claim that“appears”has at least two different senses. Mike's response to this case is as follows:

“Similarly, rather than postulating an ambiguity in‘appears", we may say that a person can have conflicting appearances. Granted, the two appearances in Chisholm's case are, in a sense of different sorts. The elliptical appearance is, we might say, a more primitive sort of sensory appearance; the round appearance results from more and more sophisticated information processing in the brain.” (331)

Comment

    How does this enable one to avoid the claim that when one says,“The table appears elliptical”one is saying something different from when one says It seems that the table is elliptical,” given that the former is true, and the latter false? Moreover, doesnt the reference to “information processing” support the conclusion that seems”has an epistemic/evidential sense, and similarly for the“appears that”locution?

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1.4 Are Epistemic Seemings Beliefs?

    In this section, Mike discusses a view, advanced by Berit Brogaard, that“some seemings, which she terms‘epistemic seemings', are just beliefs" (332), and for which Brogaard offers the following sort of argument. On the one hand, some seemings – which she refers to as“epistemic seemings”– “go away in the presence of a rebutting defeater if the agent is rational,” whereas other seemings, or appearances do not.  Mike's response is as follows:

Some appearances, particularly low-level appearances such as perceptual experiences are immune to counterevidence, but there may also be more sophisticated appearances that are capable of responding to evidence” (332).

Comment

    How is this to be explained? Why should counterevidence – which could be massive – be effective in some cases, but be totally ineffective when it comes to a seeming such as something's appearing red to one? A natural answer is that counterevidence has no effect in low-level perceptual cases because “appears red”, for example, has a phenomenal sense, whereas counterevidence has an effect in higher-level cases because there one is dealing with an epistemic sense of“appears”or“seems".

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    Brogaard also suggests that epistemic seemings are connected to probabilities. Mike's rejoinder is that a person may have seemings that are response to counterevidence even if the person has no concept of probability. But Brogaard, who seems to formulate her account in term of a belief about the probability of some state of affairs, could simply revise her account by referring instead to the subjective probability that some state of affairs exists: a person can have different degrees of assent to different propositions without having any concept of probability.

1.5 Qualia-Free Seemings

    In this section, Mike is challenging an argument that I advanced, and he begins by considering some candidates for qualia-free seemings.  First, there is proprioception, and here Mike says, “There are many ways in which one's body can be positioned without noticeable sensations of tension but in which one still seems aware of the positioning” (333).

    My first response is that an example of one of these“many ways”would have been helpful. But second, consider the following. Any part of one's body that is touching any other object will involve tactile sensations.  Any part of one's body that is not touching any other object is being held up against the force of gravity, so muscular effort, and hence muscular sensations, will surely be present. But even if one were in a gravity free environment, there are sensations associated with whether a given muscle is in a contracted or in an extended state.

    Next there is the‘blindsight' case, where I suggest that one needs to posit degrees of belief to explain the blindsight behavior, and that, having done so, there is no need to postulate a qualia-free seeming. Mike's response here is, “But one might still posit appearances to explain why the subject has such an elevated degree of belief” (333).

    My response to this is that one can equally ask what would explain the seeming that Mike wants to postulate – since it is surely not true that it has no cause at all – and the answer would presumably be that it was caused by some neurophysiological state produced by light striking the blind person's eyes. But then there's no need to postulate a seeming to explain the degree of belief: the latter can be explained by the relevant neurophysiological state. One can jettison the 'middle man'.

    Mike also mentions the case of apparent factual memories. Here again my appeal is to degrees of belief.  I may not believe that Napoleon was defeated in 1815, since my subjective probability that this was so may be less than one-half, but my subjective probability that Napoleon was defeated in 1815 may be greater than my subjective probability that Napoleon was defeated in 1816, and similarly for any year other than 1815.

    Finally, Mike does not think that the non-existence of qualia-free seemings provides any ground for questioning the whole concept of a seeming.  But if the concept of a seeming involves no reference to qualia, if a seeming involves only some sort of unique relation to a proposition, wouldn't it be a very surprising – and inherently very improbable fact – if absolutely every seeming that anyone ever had was accompanied by qualia?

    Mike concludes this section by saying, “I would need to hear much more to be convinced that non-representational qualia can do all the epistemological and semantic work that seemings as assertive propositional attitudes can do” (334).

    Here my response is that suppose that headaches are non-representational qualia.  Those non-representational qualia will typically give rise to beliefs about those qualia. Then consider a scenario mentioned in an earlier class, in which one is kidnapped by aliens, in which there is a drug that eliminates any internal causes of headaches, but where there are external causes of headaches – "headache clouds". The result would be that headache states, which had involved non-representational qualia, would become associated with the presence of headache clouds, and when one had a headache, one would then come to form the belief that a headache cloud was present. The upshot, then, is whether qualia of a certain type are representational or not is not fixed by the intrinsic nature of qualia but by external relations, since what are non-representational qualia in the actual world, could instead be representational qualia in a slightly different world.

1.6 Awareness of Apparent Evidence

       In this section, Mike responds to accounts of epistemic/evidential seeming that Earl Conee and I offered. Here Mike says,

“A person might be disposed to believe that T is evidence for P solely because he wants T to be evidence for P.  This would not count as P's seeming true to that person.  Thus, suppose that because I desperately want to convince myself that theism is rational, I deceive myself into believing that any conscious experience is evidence for the existence of God. . . .  It is not plausible to infer that thereafter, whenever I have a headache, it seems to me that God exists.” (335)

Comments

    First, in thinking about the final sentence in the above quote, it is crucial not to think that seemings are by definition states of consciousness.  Any pure propositional attitude state – such as a belief or preference – is such that one can be in that type of state at a given time without there being any conscious state at that time that is in any way related to that state.  As one walks along, for example, one presumably believes that there is no chasm ahead of one, but one does not typically have the conscious thought that there is no chasm ahead.  Similarly, if seemings exist, there is surely not, aside from exceptional cases, any conscious state of its seeming to one that there is no chasm immediately in front of one. So to think that having a headache is evidentially relevant to the existence of God, on the grounds, say, the existence of consciousness would be extremely improbable that consciousness would exist in a Godless world, does not entail that whenever one has a headache there will be a conscious state of its epistemically seeming to one that God exists.

    Secondly, mistaken beliefs about evidential relations between propositions p and q can certainly, given a belief that p, generate a belief that q. But if this is so, why cannot mistaken beliefs about evidential relations also generate a state in which it epistemically/evidentially seems to one that q?  Indeed, isn't it a rather common occurrence for it to seem to someone that something is that case because they overestimate the strength of some piece of evidence.

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Huemer's Objection Based on the Case of the External World Skeptic

    Next, Mike offers an objection to the general sort of analysis that Earl Conee and I have proposed in the case of epistemic seemings:

“Even the most committed skeptics do not deny that there seem to be external objects around us; they just claim that we are not justified in assuming that things are as they appear” (335)

    What is one to say about this argument? My answer is, first, that what I offered was explicitly of what it is for something to“epistemically”appear a certain way; secondly, that I hold there is also a phenomenal sense of seeming that refers to the having of relevant experiences; and thirdly, that it is the latter sense of appearing, and not the epistemic sense, that is relevant in the case of the external world skeptic.

    Consider, for example, what Chisholm calls the“comparative”sense of appears”(or “looks").  Just as one can say that X appears green to P just in case X appears to P the way that green things appear to normal human observers under normal conditions, so one compare the experiences that one actually ahs with the experiences that one would be having if one were really perceiving an external physical world, and one can say that it seems to one that an external physical world exists just in case the experiences one has are phenomenally the same as the experiences one would be having if one were what would then be a normal human actually perceiving an external, physical world under what would then be normal conditions.

    In short, the sense in which it seems to an external world skeptic that there are physical objects is an experiential sense of seeming, not an epistemic (or evidential) sense.

    Conee refers to dispositions to accept certain things, whereas in the account that I offer of epistemic seeming, which Mike quotes on page 334, I do not refer to dispositions at all.  Later, on page 336, Mike asks what the ground is for the“disposition to accept [T is evidence for P]”(338). In the case of my account, the question would instead be that the ground is for the person's believing the proposition  [T is evidence for P].   On my view of logical (or epistemic) probability, if the belief in the truth of the proposition [T is evidence for P] is a rational belief, it must rest on a recognition that the proposition in question is analytically true.  But as I noted earlier, I think that its epistemically seeming to a person that something is the case can rest upon an erroneous belief concerning evidential relations.

    Finally, Mike suggests, with regards to the clause“T is evidence for E,”

“It is more natural simply to identify the seeming with T, and to hold that T counts as a seeming in virtue of having the very feature that grounds the disposition to form certain beliefs” (336)

But in cases of epistemic seemings, such an identification will generally be ruled out, because although state T might be a case of being directly acquainted with some quale, T will usually be a state of believing some proposition, and I assume that no state can be both a believing and a seeming.

2. The Subjects Perspective Objection

    I agree with Mike's rejection of Matthias Steup's“Subject's Perspective Objection” (SPO). It certainly seems right to me that, on the one hand, that if the subject has evidence that a certain proposition is only accidentally true, then that is reasonably viewed as a defeater for the seeming-based justification, and, on the other hand, that it is not legitimate to require that one be justified in believing that that the proposition is not accidentally true. SPO can be used, in short, only as a negative condition upon justification, not as a positive one.  Treating it as a positive requirement would generate an infinite regress.

    Incidentally, I think that the general point that Fumerton has made, and that is quoted in footnote 12, is very important:

“The idea that X constitutes one's justification for believing P only if one's awareness of X is added to X is equivalent to holding that X constitutes one's justification for believing P only if it does not really constitute one's justification for believing P.”

3. Seemings and Inferential Justification


3.1 Teasers about Inference and Inferential Justification

     The main thing that Mike says here is,

“. . . in the case of inferential justification, a subject must normally possess not only an inferential appearance, but also some justification for believing the premises of the inference, in order to have justification for believing the conclusion” (338)

3.2 Justification by Fallacious Inference

    Here I would now agree with Mike.  An inference may involve faulty reasoning, but if one is justified in believing that the inference is sound, then it seems right that one is justified in accepting the conclusion.

3.3 The Double Counting Objection

    Mike's initial response here is to introduce the expression“inferential appearance.”This is not very fully explained, but it seems that an inferential appearance that q is a combination of its seeming that p, together with its seeming that p entails (or at least supports) q.  (Huemer refers to“the inferential appearance that P must be true in the light of E”(340), which I am suggesting can be interpreted in the way just indicated.  But I am not very confident about my interpretation.)

    But if this is what is involved in an inferential appearance, it would seem that one could have an inferential appearance that q, without its seeming to one that q.  (Compare the case of belief.  Isn't it possible to believe that p entails q, and, while continuing to have that belief, to come to believe that p, without then going on to believe that q, since one doesn't so to speak, ever bring the two beliefs together?

    Mike's basic response, however, is to say, in effect, that the principle of Phenomenal Conservatism says nothing that all about when the combination of two seemings can provide more support for some belief than either seeming on its own, and thus one can go on to hold, for example, that if its seeming to one that q depends upon its seeming to one that q, then the combination of the two seemings cannot result in a greater justification for the belief that q than the seeming that p would on its own.

    This seems to me to be a satisfactory response to the double counting objection that I advanced.

4. Self-Defeat and Naïve Inferentialism

    In this section, Mike considers an objection advanced by Peter Markle.  As Mike points out, there are two different ways of interpreting Markle's objection.  According to the one interpretation, what Markle is objecting to is the idea that a normative statement of affairs, such as E's being justified, can causally give rise to P's being justified, where P is inferred from E. Mike's response to Markle's objection, thus interpreted, is that E's being justified plays no role in the inference leading from E to P. An inferential appearance that, in the light of E, P must be the case, together with its seeming that E, is what gives rise to P, and both of the former are purely descriptive states of affairs.

    On the second interpretation of Markle's argument, Markle seems to be claiming,

“ . . . a perceptual appearance that X is F will confer justification for [X is F] only if the subject possesses background evidence of the sort that would justify the proposition that things that appear the way X in fact appears are F” (342).

    On the face of it, there does not appear to be any reason why one should accept this requirement, and, as Mike points out, accepting it leads to skeptical problems:

“If, that is, any perceptual appearance can justify a belief based on it only if one has some prior empirical information, then we shall find ourselves unable to acquire any empirical knowledge, for lack of a starting point” (334)

5. The Tainted Sources Objection

    The objection that Mike addresses here is one that has been advanced by Peter Markel and Susanna Sigel, and it is that its seeming to S that P might be caused, for example, by  S's wanting it to be the case that P, and the contention is then that when its seeming to S that P has a cause that is, so to speak, epistemically irrelevant, then its seeming to S that P should not provide any justification for the belief that P.  But according to the principle of Phenomenal Conservatism, it does.

     Mike initially focuses upon a case where the seeming is caused by a mental state M that the person in question has reasonable to doubt is a reliable source of seemings. In that case, the person has a defeater, and there is no problem. Mike then considers the idea that it is not enough that there is a defeater for its seeming that P: it should be that even if one were not aware that mental state M is not a reliable source of seemings, the resulting seeming that P should still not provide any justification for P.

    Like Mike, I see no reason to accept the latter claim. Among other things, to accept the notion that things to which one has no access can affect what beliefs are justified looks like a straightforward rejecting of internalism with regard to justification in terms of some form of externalism.

    The second case is one where the person knows that a given seeming has been produced by a mental state M that is, in fact, an unreliable source of seemings, but where the person in question has no reason for thinking that this is so.

    Suppose, for example, that the person knows that its seeming to him or her that p has arisen because he or she has a wish that p be the case, but doesn't seem any reason why this should undermine the justificatory force of its seeming to him or her that p. Mike doesn't share the intuition that its seeming to the person that p no longer serves to justify the belief that p, but doesn't really have any argument to offer.

Comment

    I'm unsure what to make of this objection.  On the one hand, if a person has no justification for believing that seemings that are generated by wishes are unreliable, then one might think that knowledge hat the seeming was generated by a wish does not undermine the justificatory force of any resulting seeming. On the other hand, if one adopts an alternative, direct awareness approach to justification, then it is, in general a priori improbable that a belief that p that is generated by a wish will be true, and thus, if one has a justified belief that a given belief was caused by a corresponding wish, the probability that the belief is true will be very low, and the belief will thus be unjustified.

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    The third and final case that Mike considers is one where the person is aware that the seeming is caused by a mental state that is an unreliable. Here I would agree with Mike that this third case provides no reason for rejecting the principle of Phenomenal Conservatism, and my reason for agreeing is that if one holds that the justificatory force of the seeming is undercut by a fact of which the person has no knowledge, then one is bringing an externalist element into one’s account of the justification of beliefs.

    Of the three cases that Mike considers, his answers to the first and the third cases seem to me fine, while the second case seems to me hard to decide about.

    Mike sketches an amusing case in which a hallucination of a cat is caused by one's pressing a button that one knows will cause such a hallucination, which one does because one desires to see a cat, and believes that cats are messengers from God. One also knows that pressing the button will erase one's memories of what produced the hallucination. Mike concludes, quite correctly in my view,

 “The lesson seems to be that the ability of an appearance to confer justification is independent of whether, unbeknownst to the subject, the appearance is caused by an unreliable process, and unjustified belief, or even an epistemically unworthy desire” (345)

    The final objection that Mike addresses in this section is due to Mathew McGrath, and involves a case of “free enrichment,” in which it seems to S that E, and, although E does not support P, its seeming to S that E, together with S's desire that P be the case, gives rise to its seeming to S that P.  Mike argues that McGrath's case does not really add anything to the earlier cases advanced by Peter Markle and Susanna Siegel.  One still has the three types of subcases that arise, and that are open to the same answers.

6. PC Über Alles

    Footnote 22 is nice!       

6.1 Evidentialism

    Here the view that Mike is considering is one advanced by Earl Conee, which is as follows (346):

EJB    If S's belief in X is based on propositionally justifying evidence S has supporting X, then, in the absence of defeaters, S thereby has at least some degree of justification for believing X.

    Mike points out that Evidentialism, thus understood, is perfectly compatible with the principle of Phenomenal Conservatism. The reason is that Evidentialism, thus defined, says nothing at all about what counts as propositionally justifying evidence. In addition, the term“'evidence' is an epistemically evaluative term,”and one needs“to identify the non-evaluative conditions that confer epistemic justification” (346).

    Mike also advances the following argument:

    “Suppose we say that external world beliefs are typically propositionally justified because subjects possess evidence for those beliefs.  What is the evidence? Presumably, it is the subjects’ sensory experience. But what makes a sensory experience constitute evidence for a particular proposition?  The phenomenal conservative has a natural answer: a sensory experience counts as evidence for [P] when the experience is or contains a certain sort of mental representation (namely, an appearance) with [P] as its content. If we reject this content, what else might we appeal to? Should we appeal to the experiences non-cognitive qualia? But it is obscure why some non-representational mental quale should count as evidence for some proposition about external objects. Should we appeal to some non-propositional representation? Or a representation of some proposition other options seem puzzling and unnatural. I doubt that we will have much more luck accounting for the evidential value of memories or intuitions, either”(346-7) than [P] or a representation that has [P] as its content but that does not represent P as being the case? All of these options seem quite puzzling and unnatural. I doubt that we will have much more luck accounting for the evidential value of memories or intuitions, either” (346-7).

Comments

1. Mike says, “ . . . it is obscure why some non-representational mental quale should count as evidence for some proposition about external objects.”  Is it also obscure (1) how beliefs about non-representational mental qualia can serve to justify beliefs about external objects? Hume offers a famous skeptical argument for the view that this can never be done, based on the idea that beliefs about non-representational mental qualia could be evidence for beliefs about external objects only if had established a correlation between the two, and this, Hume argued, was impossible, since one could never directly observed external objects.

    C. S. Pierce, however, discovered the idea of abductive inference (inference to the best explanation, hypothetical-deductive method, the method of hypothesis), and once that idea is on the table, and if one can justify abduction, then it is possible that beliefs about non-representational mental qualia can serve to justify beliefs about external objects, since one may be able to show that the hypothesis that there is an external, mind-independent world is the best explanation of one's sensory experiences.

2. But what about the justification of beliefs about non-representational mental qualia? Is it perhaps not obscure (2) how beliefs about non-representational mental qualia can be justified?

    The question here is whether one can be directly aware of states of affairs, or directly acquainted with states of affairs, and, if one can, whether such direct awareness or direct acquaintance serves to justify the beliefs that arise in that way.     

6.2 Acquaintance

    Here Mike sets out an argument modeled on an argument that Richard Fumerton set out against a version of direct realism. The version in question is one where it is claimed that one is non-inferentially justified in believing certain propositions about physical states of affairs because one is directly aware of those physical states of affairs. The argument is then, first, that for any experiences involved when one is directly aware of some physical state of affairs, one could have precisely the same experiences if one were hallucinating, and so not aware, let alone directly aware, of any physical state of affairs. But secondly, if one were hallucinating, one would equally be justified in believing in the existence of a physical state of affairs of the sort in question. Thirdly, given one's justification would be the same in both cases. Accordingly, it cannot be true when one is not hallucinating that one's belief about the physical state of affairs is justified via direct awareness of the physical state of affairs.

    The point then is that if hallucinatory direct acquaintance with qualia is possible, then one can parallel Fumerton's argument, as Mike does (347), and derive the corresponding conclusion that beliefs about non-representational mental qualia cannot be justified via direct acquaintance with such qualia.

    The crucial question, accordingly, is whether hallucinatory direct acquaintance is possible. Here Mike says, "The most convincing examples involve a priori intuitions, states of understanding, or other putative bases for a priori justification” (347).

    Some philosophers, most notably Bertrand Russell and Richard Fumerton, have appealed to direct acquaintance with universals in order to explain the justification of beliefs involving necessary truths. I do not want to rule out that approach, but I do think that direct acquaintance with qualia is a more unproblematic notion than direct acquaintance with universals.

    My own preferred approach to the justification of beliefs involving necessary truths is to start with necessary truths that are purely formal, and here I want to start with accounts of the concepts of logical connectives. Given an account of the justification of purely formal necessary truths, the idea is to give an account of the concept of a definition, and to use that to provide an account of the justification of analytic truths. That leaves one with the case of synthetic a priori truths, and here I confess to being inclined to skepticism concerning the existence of synthetic a priori truths. Such skepticism has some serious consequences, perhaps most notably an error theory of value. In addition, can one really deny that it is impossible for something to be both red and green all over?!

    The usual approach to the justification of claimed synthetic a priori truths involves an appeal to intuition. Here, too, I am inclined to skepticism.  Consider the following claim, somewhat related to the proposition that it is impossible for something to be both red and green all over:

It is impossible for there to be a color that is reddish-green

Some would claim that this is a necessary truth, knowable by intuition. It seems to me likely, on the contrary, that the proposition in question is false. What is going on, it seems to me, is that we humans are unable to imagine a reddish-green color. But that's not because such a color is possible; it's because of facts about the human visual system, namely, that we have blue-yellow and red-green cones in our eyes. Because of this, we can imagine reddish-blue, reddish-yellow, greenish-blue, and greenish-yellow colors, but not reddish-green or bluish-yellow. But if we had instead, for example, red-blue and yellow-green cones in our eyes, we could imagine reddish-green colors.

    In short, providing an account of the justification of beliefs involving propositions that are necessary truths is a challenge one, and it is not clear to me that the idea of appealing to direct acquaintance with universals is the right approach. But the difficulty here provides no reason for thinking that the idea of direct acquaintance with qualia is problematic, or that it cannot provide a satisfactory justification of one’s beliefs about mental states involving qualia.   

6.3 Internalist Reliabilism

    Internalist reliabilism, advanced by Matthias Steup, claims that seemings on their own are not sufficient to justify a corresponding belief: one must also have memories that support the proposition that seemings of the type in question are reliable.

    Mike's response to this view is, first, that it faces a serious skeptical challenge, since if memories are themselves seemings, then those seemings will not justify corresponding propositions unless one has memories of the reliability of seemings of the sort in question, and then it appears the one is off on an infinite regress.  If one tries to escape that regress by holding that memories are not seemings, then memories will not serve to justify the claim that other seemings are reliable unless one claims that both seemings and memories are sources of justification. But then the question arises as to why memories, like seemings, are incapable to justifying beliefs until one has shown that memories of the relevant sort are reliable.

    The appropriate conclusion, Mike suggests, is therefore as follows:

    “At some point, we must reject the demand for evidence of the reliability of our cognition. And if we are to reject that demand at some point, we might as well reject it at the beginning and allow appearances to justify beliefs by default” (349). 

6.4 Concluding Challenge

    Mike's concluding challenge consists in noting that the principle of Phenomenal Conservatism enables one to show that “sensory experiences provide justification for external-world beliefs, that intuitions provide justification for a priori beliefs, and that memories provide justification for beliefs about the past” (349).  Can one find some alternative approach that enables one to show that all of these types of beliefs can be justified?

Concluding Comments

1. The principle of Phenomenal Conservatism does not specify the extent to which a seeming supports the corresponding belief.  Suppose it seems to S that p, and S has no defeaters for p.  What degree of assent to p is thereby justified?  The principle of Phenomenal Conservatism provides no answer. But this is something that any satisfactory account of justification needs to do.

2.  It is very plausible that it would not seem to one that there was a red physical object in front of one if it did not seem to you that there was an instance of qualitative redness.  So the former seeming is derived, rather than basic. If then it seems to you that there is a red physical object in front of you, what degree of assent to the proposition that there is a red physical object in front of one is justified? The answer, it seems to me, depends upon the logical probability of the proposition that there is a red physical object in front of you given the proposition that one is in a mental state involving an instance of qualitative redness.  But then a defense of direct realism is not going to be successful unless a defense of indirect realism is equally successful.  The upshot is that the principle of Phenomenal Conservatism, by allowing both basic and derived seemings to ground justification, many look as if it can supply a fairly quick answer to the problem of justifying beliefs about physical states of affairs, but this is an illusion resting upon a failure to ask how much supported a derived seeming can provide for the corresponding belief.

     The way to avoid falling prey to this illusion is to restrict the principle of phenomenal conservatism to basic seemings. But then it will quickly be clear that the principle provides no quick road to the justification of beliefs about an external world.

3. Mike mentions beliefs about the past, but not beliefs about the future. How satisfactory is appeal to the principle of Phenomenal Conservatism when it comes to the refutation of inductive skepticism?  It seems to me that it is quite unsatisfactory. First of all, a satisfactory account of the justification of induction must tell one how likely it is that a regularity that has held in N cases in the past will continue to hold in the next case, and how likely it is that it holds in all future cases. The ordinary seemings that one has combined with the principle of Phenomenal Conservatism provide no answers to these questions. Secondly, one can show that if governing laws of nature are not logically possible, then induction cannot be justified. Appeal to the principle of Phenomenal Conservatism to justify the common belief in the legitimacy of inductive inference conceals the fact of this dependence, thereby concealing the possibility of a dramatic defeater for all inductive inference.

4.  The principle of Phenomenal Conservatism allows beliefs to be justified far too easily, since it cannot, on pain of abandoning an internalist approach to justification, distinguish between, on the one hand, perceptual seemings that have arisen from sensory experiences, or memory seemings that have been caused by one’s earlier experiences, and, on other hand, religious seemings that one acquired from one’s parents, and seemings that would have been very different if one had been born in a different society. An acquaintance approach to the justification of beliefs, by contrast, does not allow such an easy justification of such beliefs.