Experience and Belief

EXPERIENCE AND BELIEF AN INQUIRY INTO THE DOXASTIC VARIABILITY OF EXPERIENCE by Tom Raja Rosenhagen M.A., Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster 2005 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2018 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH THE KENNETH P. DIETRICH SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by Tom Raja Rosenhagen It was defended on June 21, 2018 and approved by Anil Gupta, Alan Ross Anderson Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, Department of Philosophy John McDowell, Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy, Department of Philosophy Robert B. Brandom, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, Department of Philosophy Edouard Machery, Distinguished Professor of History and Philosophy of Science, Department of History and Philosophy of Science Dissertation Director: Anil Gupta, Alan Ross Anderson Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, Department of Philosophy ii Copyright © by Tom Raja Rosenhagen 2018 iii EXPERIENCE AND BELIEF AN INQUIRY INTO THE DOXASTIC VARIABILITY OF EXPERIENCE Tom Raja Rosenhagen, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2018 If what we believe can directly modify our (visual) experience, our experience is doxastically variable. If so, the following seems possible: our false and irrational background beliefs can modify our experience such that in it, things look distorted, or that it conforms with and appears to confirm the false and irrational beliefs that helped bring it about in the first place. If experience is doxastically variable, it seems, its epistemic function can be undermined. However, in this dissertation, I argue that we can devise accounts of (visual) experience that meet two requirements: they are fully compatible with all kinds of doxastic variation and on them, even doxastically variable experience serves to rationally constrain our beliefs. I begin with a novel interpretation of Hanson’s account of theory-laden observation—a valiant, yet ultimately unsuccessful attempt to meet both these requirements. Next, I analyze and reject various contemporary relationalist accounts of experience and the most sophisticated recent representationalist attempt to accommodate phenomena of doxastic variation: Siegel’s (Rich) Content View. Then, based on the lessons learned and drawing on Hanson’s and Gupta’s work, I show what shape a successful account may take. Ultimately, I argue for the following theses: 1) Neither of the two dominant accounts of experience—relationalism and standard representationalism—currently succeeds in satisfactorily meeting both requirements. 2) To arrive at accounts that do meet them, we should drop both the restrictive relationalist conception of experience as a relation to mind-independent items and the standard representationalist conception of experience as justifying beliefs. 3) We make progress by iv adopting both the general conception of experience as making rational transitions to beliefs, judgments, and actions and a (slightly) modified version of Gupta’s presentationalist account of experiential phenomenology. Finally, 4) the possibility of devising successful accounts is independent of a major issue dividing relationalists and representationalists: whether experience has content. In the final chapters, I address various follow-up questions concerning the nature of views, conceptual capacities, conceptual content, and linkages between a subject’s experience and her responses. In concluding, I show that the account of experience I recommend is widely applicable in philosophy and beyond. v TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE x 1.0 INTRODUCTION 1 2.0 HANSON’S ACCOUNT OF THEORY-LADEN OBSERVATION 9 2.1 EPISTEMICALLY SIGNIFICANT SEEING INVOLVES SEEING AS 11 2.2 SEEING AS IS INTELLIGIBLE ONLY IN TERMS OF SEEING THAT 13 2.3 THROUGH SEEING AS, BELIEFS CAN AFFECT ONE’S VISUAL FIELD 22 2.3.1 What’s Wrong with Sense-Datum Accounts 22 2.3.2 The Organization of the Visual Field 25 2.3.3 Effects on the Elements of the Visual Field 28 2.4 DOES OBSERVATION CONSTRAIN OUR BELIEFS? 29 2.5 PHENOMENOLOGY, EMPIRICAL CONSTRAINT, AND AMALGAMATION 34 3.0 FROM HANSON TO RELATIONALISM 38 3.1 NO CONTENT, ACQUAINTANCE, AND CONSTITUTION 45 3.2 RELATIONALISM, DVEC, BMCEC, AND BMCC 52 3.3 HANSON AND RELATIONALISM 55 4.0 RELATIONALISM I: FISH’S OBJECT-PROPERTY VIEW 60 4.1 CONSTITUTION, THE PHENOMENAL, THE PRESENTATIONAL, AND CONSTRAINING FACTORS 60 4.2 NO ACQUAINTANCE WITHOUT CONCEPTUAL CAPACITIES: FISH ON EXPERT VISION 68 4.3 IDENTITY*, SUPERVENIENCE, AND INTERSUBJECTIVE COMMONALITIES 72 4.4 FACTS, PROPERTIES, AND CONCEPTUAL CAPACITIES 78 4.5 BASIC ACQUAINTANCE AND PROJECTION EFFECTS 88 4.5.1 Basic Acquaintance 88 4.5.2 Projection Effects 91 vi 4.5.2.1 The Banana Case 93 4.5.2.2 Physical Illusions 95 4.5.2.3 Cognitive Illusions 99 4.5.2.4 Optical Illusions 105 4.6 CONCLUSION 107 5.0 RELATIONALISM II: BREWER’S OBJECT VIEW 109 5.1 THINLY AND THICKLY LOOKING OBJECTS 111 5.2 WAYS OF THINLY LOOKING AND VISUALLY RELEVANT SIMILARITY RELATIONS 112 5.3 THINLY LOOKING THE SAME, NO DVEP FOR THIN LOOKS, BREWERIAN CONSTITUTION, AND THE GENERAL CONSTRAINT ON THIN LOOKS 117 5.4 THICKLY LOOKING SOME WAY 123 5.5 FISH AND BREWER 125 5.6 MULTIPLE PHENOMENOLOGIES AND (AGAIN) THE BANANA CASE 131 5.7 CONCLUSION 140 6.0 RELATIONALISM III: GENONE’S PROPERTY VIEW 142 6.1 APPEARANCES AS MIND-INDEPENDENT PROPERTIES 146 6.2 GENONE’S (MISSING) ACCOUNT OF CONSTITUTION 154 6.3 MISLEADING APPEARANCES AND DVEP 159 6.3.1 Misleading Appearances 159 6.3.2 Genonean Expert Vision 164 6.3.3 The Banana Case—Strategy 1: Phenomenal Pluralism 169 6.3.4 The Banana Case—Strategy 2: Appearance-Judgment Relations Shifted 174 6.4 OPEN QUESTIONS 180 6.4.1 Phenomenal Pluralism After All? 180 6.4.2 Flexibility—an Epistemic Downside? 182 6.4.3 Appearance-Judgment Relations 186 6.5 LEAVING RELATIONALISM BEHIND 189 7.0 SIEGEL’S RICH CONTENT VIEW 194 7.1 THE CONTENT VIEW 197 7.1.1 Siegel’s Notion of Visual Experience 198 vii 7.1.2 Content-Bearing Phenomenal States 201 7.1.3 The Argument from Appearing 206 7.1.4 Which Properties do Phenomenal States Represent? 212 7.1.4.1 Non-Arbitrariness and Expert Vision 214 7.1.4.2 Phenomenal States and Their Contents 217 7.1.5 Implications 229 7.2 THE RATIONAL ROLE OF SIEGELIAN EXPERIENCE 233 7.2.1 Irrational Experiences and Reduced Epistemic Powers 234 7.2.2 Objections 241 7.3 THE GENERAL ROLE OF EXPERIENCE 250 7.3.1 Dropping the Standard Representationalist Conception of the Role of Experience 250 7.3.2 No Defensive Measures Necessary 255 7.3.3 The Alternative 256 7.3.4 Taking Stock 262 8.0 HANSON REVAMPED 263 8.1 A HANSONIAN VARIABLE CONTENT VIEW 265 8.1.1 Experiential Content 266 8.1.2 Empirical Constraint Recouched 269 8.1.3 Amalgamation 274 8.1.4 Modifiable Amalgamation, Genonean Misleading Appearances, and Seeings As as Dispositional States 277 8.1.5 Stable Amalgamations 279 8.2 ACTUAL VS. RATIONAL TRANSITIONS & CONCLUDING REMARKS 281 9.0 GUPTA’S PRESENTATIONALISM 287 9.1 APPEARANCES 291 9.1.1 Subjective Identity, Color Appearances, Projection Effects, and Expert Vision Proper 292 9.1.2 Appearances and Manifestation, Total Hallucinations, the Items Requirement on Appearance, and Projection Effects Again 298 9.2 LINKAGES 306 9.2.1 Linkages in Views 308 viii 9.2.2 Linkage Institution 314 9.2.3 Ineffability 317 9.3 TAKING STOCK 324 10.0 CONCLUSION 327 10.1 SUMMARY 327 10.2 LESSONS LEARNED 343 10.3 THE NO PHENOMENOLOGY CHALLENGE AND THE RECEPTIVE KNOWLEDGE COMPLAINT 346 10.3.1 The No Phenomenology Challenge 347 10.3.2 The Receptive Knowledge Complaint 355 10.3.2.1 McDowell on Receptive Knowledge 356 10.3.2.2 Hansonian Receptive Knowledge 362 10.4 STILL NO END IN SIGHT: OPEN QUESTIONS AND FURTHER AVENUES TO PURSUE 367 BIBLIOGRAPHY 376 ix PREFACE “बिन गु셁 ज्ञान कह ॉंसे पाऊँ ।” Mohammad Rafi (1952). Man Tarpat Hari Darshan Ko Aaj. Baiju Bawra This is a long dissertation. Also, it has been long in the making. I cannot pinpoint exactly when I began to think about the so-called theory-ladenness of observation, but I suspect that it must have been roughly 15 years ago, when at the University of Münster, I participated in a reading group on philosophy of science and somehow happened upon Norwood Russell Hanson’s first chapter of his 1958 book Patterns of Discovery—the chapter on observation—in which the term ‘theory-ladenness of observation’ is coined. It is impossible to say how often I have read this chapter since, or the much more extended version of the arguments it contains that spans several chapters in Hanson’s posthumously published Perception and Discovery. Not only did I reread this material frequently, I also drew on the concept of theory-ladenness in my Master’s thesis on Bas van Fraassen’s constructive empiricism. In it, I complained, inter alia, that van Fraassen does not provide us with a notion of experience that fits his empiricist leanings. Accordingly, I submitted, we cannot assess whether his account improves over that once proposed by the Logical Empiricists, whose notion of experience, arguably, was ill-suited to accommodate theory-ladenness. I repeatedly presented on Hanson’s work and on theory-ladenness in general at various conferences and Hanson’s chapter on observation became a standard syllabus component whenever I taught introductory classes on philosophy of science. Typically, my audiences—and many students, too—enjoyed Hanson’s work and what I extracted from it, but only a handful of people had even so much as heard about Hanson before. And among these select few, even fewer had read anything of him, and nobody had ever read it the way I think we should.

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