What PHILOSOPHERS call 'the causal or causalist heory of perception' has for some time
received comparatively little attention (by Oxonian philosophers, surely, for psychologists START being psychologists by studying perception), mainly, one suspects, because it has been generally assumed that the philosophical causalist theory of perception either asserts or
involves as a consequence the proposition that this or that material thing (if not object) is not observable (and thus, that a material-thing utterance is UNVERIFIABLE and meaningless) and that the unacceptability of this proposition is sufficient to dispose of the theory!
At Oxford, some of us are inclined to regard this rough and hasty attitude against the causalist theory of perception as unfair or at least unduly
unsympathetic and I shall attempt to outline a thesis which might not improperly be considered to be a version of the causalist theory of perception (one which has "The pillar box BEING red" CAUSING my uttering "The pillar box SEEMS red"), and which is, if not true, at least not too obviously false.
What is to count as holding a causalist theory of perception?
One may take it as being insufficient merely to believe that a perceiver's perceiving a material thing is *always* to be causalistically explained or accounted for (using 'because') by reference to this or that condition the specification of at least one of
which involves a mention of the material thing alleged to be perceived; that, e.g., the perceiver's perceiving that the pillar box seems red is the terminus of a causal sequence or chain involving at an earlier stage some event or process in the 'natural history' of the perceived thing, the pillar box.
Honestly, such a belief seem to be *hardly* philosophical in character.
The object or content of that belief has the appearance of being a very general CONTINGENT (and not conceptual or analytic, or 'logically grammatical,' as we like them at Oxford) proposition.
It is worth remarking, though, that if the version of the causalist theory of perceiving with which I shall be primarily concerned is correct, it (or something like it) will turn out to be a necessary, and thus 'analytic, 'conceptual,' and displaying the logical grammar of 'seeming,' rather than a boring, scientific, contingent truth (I'm a philosopher!)
It may be held that the elucidation or analysis or exploration into the logical grammar of the notion of 'perceiving a pillar box' or any material thing or object will include some reference to the ROLE of the material thing or object perceived in the causal ancestry of the perceiver's perceiving or of
the sense-impression or this or that sense-datum involved in the perception.
This contention is central to what at Oxford we regard as a standard version of the causalist theory of perceiving.
(3) It might be held that it is the task of the
*philosopher* (in his role of 'philosopoher of perception,' as my friend G. J. Warnock calls me, and did call me, and in front of J. L. Austin, too) not to elucidate or or analyse or characterize or explore underlying 'deep' or 'logical' grammar of the ordinary notion of expressed by the 'ordinary' language idiom of 'perceiving a pillar box,' or a material thing or object, but to provide a, shall we say, rational reconstruction (or logical construction) of it, to replace it by some concept more appropriate to this or that ideal or scientific language. We at Oxford refuse to do that!
It might further be suggested that such a re-definition, re-construction, or logical construction,, might be formulated in
terms of the effect of the presence of the pillar box or any material thing or object upon the observer's or perceiver's sense-organ and nervous system or upon his behaviour or this or that "behaviour-tendency," as Ryle would prefer, or in terms of both of these effects.
A view of this kind may perhaps deserve to be called a causalist theory of perception.
But I shall NOT be concerned with 'scientificist' theories on these lines. I'm just not interested.
MY and Warnock's problems with the idea of 'perceiving a pillar box' arises from our 'ordinary language', not with any 'ideal' language.
I shall distinguish from the adoption of a
causalist theory of perception the attempt to provide for a wider or narrower range or set of this or that proposition ascribing this or that property (being red, say) to this or that material thing or objects a certain sort of causal analysis: the kind of analysis which I have in mind is that which, on one possible interpretation, Locke could be taken as suggesting for ascriptions of, for example, colour and temperature.
Locke might be understood to be holding that such
a proposition asserts that a material thing or object would, in certain standard conditions, cause a perceiver or an observer to have certain sorts of this or that idea or this or that sense-impression.
In Price's esssay on "Perception," there appears a preliminary formulation of the causalist theory of perception which would bring it under the second
of the headings distinguished in the previous paragraph.
The causalist theory of perception is specified as maintaining
(1) that in the case of each sense datum (not merely visual, the visum and tactual) "belonging to" simply means being caused by, so that
'Material Thing M is present to my senses' will
be equivalent to
'M causes a sense-datum with which I am acquainted.
(2) that perceptual consciousness is fundamentally an 'inference' from effect to cause.
Since it is, I think, fair to says that the expression "present to my senses" is introduced by Price as a special piece of jargon to distinguish one of the possible modal or sensory specifications of the dummy blanket verb "perceive," the first clause of the quotation above may be taken as propounding the thesis that
"I am perceiving M"
(in one usage of that expression) is to be regarded as equivalent to
"I am having (or sensing) a sense-datum which is
caused by M."
I actually like 'sensing' for 'perceiving.'
The second clause I shall for the time being
ignore.
I shall proceed to consider at some length the feature which this version of the causalist theory of perception shares with other non-causalist
theories of perception, namely, the claim that perceiving a material thing or object involves having or sensing a sense-datum.
But do we sense a sense datum?
Or do we sense the pillar box?
Sense the sense datum sounds like seeing the visum.
cf. 'sight unseen.'
For unless this claim can be made out the special features of the causalist theory of perception become otiose.
The primary difficulty facing the contention that perceiving involves having or sensing a sense-datum is that of giving a satisfactory explanation of the meaning of this piece of philosophical jargon so beloved by classically trained Oxonian philosophers, the 'sense-datum.'
Cf.
Is there a problem about sense data?
by my friend G. A. Paul.
He was indoctrinated by Witters here [Cambridge], but we can forgive him.
One familiar method of attempting this task is
that of trying to prove, by means of some form of the so-called (also by philosophers) argument from illusion, the existence of objects of a special sort for which the term 'sense-datum' is offered as a class-name.
- When viewing a straight stick half-submerged in water, one is directly aware of something bent.
- No relevant physical thing is bent in this situation.
- Therefore, in this situation, one is directly aware of something non-physical.
- What one is directly aware of in this situation is the same kind of thing that one is directly aware of in normal, non-illusory perception.
- Therefore: in normal perception, one is directly aware of non-physical things.
Another method (that adapted in a famous passage by Moore) is that of giving directions which are designed to enable one to pick out items of the kind to which the 'sense-datum' is to be
applied.
Thc general charactcr of the objections to each of these procedures is also familiar, and I shall, for present purposes, assume that neither procedurc is satisfactory.
Various philosophers havc suggestcd that though attempts to indicate, or demonstrate the existence of, special objcets to be called sense-data have all failed, neverttheless the expression 'sense-datum' can (and should) be introduced as a technical
term.
Its use would be explicitly defined by reference to such supposedly standard locutions as the following:
PHAENOMENALIST UTTERANCES:
a. "The pillar box seems red to me."
b. "It seems to me as if there were a red pillar box"
c. "I seem to see a red pillar box."
and so on.
Now as the objection to such proposals which I have in mind is one which might be described as an objection in principle, it is not to my present purpose to consider how in detail such an explicit
definition of the notion of a sense-datum might be formulated.
I should, however, remark that this programme may be by no means so easy to carry through as the casual or cavalier way in which it is sometimes proposed might suggest.
Various expressions are candidates for the key role in this enterprise e.g., notably "seems," as in
"... seems phi to me,"
but also "feels" and the Latinate "appears" and the more specific "looks," etc., and the more or less subtle differences or nuances amongst them would have to be investigated.
Furthermore even if one has decided on a preferred candidate, say, "It seems to me as though there is a red pillar box before," not all of its uses would be suitable.
If for example we decide to employ the
expressions "looks" etc., the question arises as whether we are going to accept the legitimacy of a sentence
"It looks indigestible to me"
or
"It seems to me as though that cake were indigestible."
as providing us with a sense-datum sentence such as
"I am having an indigestible visual sense
datum."
which sounds ridiculous to me.
A general objection to the suggested procedure might run as follows:
When someone makes such a remark as
"The pillar box seems red to me"
the utterer conversationally implies that the pillar box is not or may not be red.
The utterer conversationally implies that q1 or q2, strictly.
The implication is disjunctive in form.
By uttering "That pillar box seems red to me" (thereby explicitly conveying that he is sensing a sense datum), the utterer conversationally implies that the pillar box is known or believed (or known) by the utterer NOT to be red, or it
has been denied by someone other than the utterer to be red, or that the utterer is doubtful whether the pillar box is red, or that someone other than the utterer has expressed doubt whether it is red, or that the situation is such that, though no doubt has actually been expressed and no denial has actually been made, some person or other might feel inclined towards denial or doubt if he were to address himself to the question whether the pillar box is actually red.
This may not be an absolutely exact or complete characterization of what the utterer conversationally implies, but it is perhaps good enough to be going on with.
Let us refer to the condition which is fulfilled when one or other of the limbs of this disjunction is true the doubt-or-denial implicatum
condition.
Now we may perhaps agree that there is liable to be something baffingly odd or even absurd about uttering
"That pillar box seems red to me" when the attending doubt-or-denial condition is fairly
obviously not fulfilled.
There would be something at least
prima facie odd about my saying
"That pillar box seems red to me"
(not as a joke)
being uninterestingly true, as we at Oxford do, is neither true nor false (Strawson, of Oxford, may well fall within this class, though! He loves a truth-value gap!)
Our every day life is populated with cases in which the sensible characteristics of the things we encounter are not the subject of any kind of doubt or controversy.
Consequently, there will be countless situations in which the employment of the "seems phi to me "
idiom would be out of order and neither true nor false.
statement is true; for he wants to go on to give a general analysis of a perceptual statement or utterance in terms of the notion of a sense-datum.
But this goal must be unattainable if a "seems phi to me" utterance (and so a sense-datum utterance) can be truly made only in a less straightforward perceptual situation; and if the goal
compatible with its literal truth.
employed the "... seems phi to me" locution when he did not suppose the doubt-or-denial condition to be fulfilled would be guilty in some fashion
of a misuse of 'ordinary' language, he could be said not to be guilty of a
misuse of the particular locution in question; for, one might say,
the implication of the fulfillment of the doubt-or-denial condition attaches
to such locutions not as a special feature of the meaning or use of these expressions, but in virtue of a general rational feature or principle or norm or requirement or desideratum or maxim or rule of discourse, or conversation, or the use of language.
somewhat similar to, though more insidious than, the mistake which would be made (as HAS been made by most Oxonians, including my friend P. H. Nowell-Smith, but he says it is MILL who makes the mistake!) if one supposed that the so-called 'pragmatic' implication that the utterer believes that it is be raining is "a part of the meaning" or sense of of the expression "It is raining".
inaccurate reply to such a supposition might be that the so-called
'implication,' 'implicatio' or 'suggestio,' attaches because the expression is a propositional one,
not because it is the particular propositional expression which it happens to be.
For some time it seemed very difficult to Grice
to find any argument which seemed at all likely to settle the issue between these two positions.
that the sense-datum sentence
should express truth if and only if the facts are as they would have to be for it to be true, if it were in order, to say .. Something looks pink to me ", even though it may not actually be in order
to say this (because the doubt-or-denial condition is unfulfilled).
this attempt to by-pass the objector's position would be met
by the reply that it begs the question; for it assumes that there is some way of specifying the facts in isolation from the implication, 'suggestio,' or 'implicatio' standardly made by an utterer by such a specification; and this is
precisely what the objector is denying.
regarded as right or wrong, but that this or that linguistic phenomenon or nuance could be looked at in either way, though there might be reasons
for preferring to adopt one way of viewing them rather than the other; that there might be no proofs or disproofs, but only inducements, even an aesthetic inducement for MY theory, Strawson suggests, on this assumption I was inclined to rule against my objector, partly because his opponent's position was more in line with the kind of thing I was inclined to say about some OTHER linguistic phenomenon or nuance which is in some degree comparable, but
mainly because the objector's short way with sense-data is an even shorter way with scepticism about the material world; and
I think a sceptic might complain that though his worries may well prove dissoluble he ought at least to be able to state them; if we do not allow him to state them we cannot remove the real
source of his discomfort.
that the issue is a decidable one, and that my objector's position
is wrong and that of his opponent right.
develop a single argument (though no doubt there are others) to
support this claim.
Let's reconsider the objection.
But even il' hc slrould not wish to say this, he certainly must say it if his ob.jcction is to be of any importance.
And yet when he learns about my attack of Smith's Disease, he would certainly think that what I had said had been FALSE.
by uttering
"That pillar box seems red to me"
he must be uttering an utterance by which he explicitly conveys THAT the pillar box seems red to me,
when it doesn't.
He's lying, or being ironic.
For in fact the D-or-D condition IS fulfilled.
"But to suppose that x satisfies this condition, but does not satisfy the first truthcondition, namely, that ;r should be red, would be to commit a logical absurdity; x cannot logically differ from red things which are not vermilionin just tl-re way in which vermilion things differ frorn red things which are not vermilion, without being red."
"And if this were so, the implication that the D-or-D condition is fulfrlled would have to be carried by what wss said or asserted by the utterance of an l-statement."
We have one in that memorable Great War ditty, so beloved by Frege:
"She was poor but she was honest.'
and (it is assumed) I am not allowed to take this as a joke.
the utterer's utterance would have been equally baffiing, if not more baffling.
My point can be stated more generally.
The objector wants to attribute to Z-statements certain special features (e.g., that of being neither T nor F in certain circumstances) which distinguish them from at lcast some other statements.
lf so, he cannot derive support for his thesis from the fact that the utterance of an l-statement would be baffiing in certain circunrstances, when those circumstances are such that (mutatis mutandis) they would make any similarly obvious stqtement whatever baffing.
He ought to take as his examples not Z-statements made about objects which both utterer and addressee can see perfectly clearly, but "L-statements made about objects which the utterer can see but the addressee cannot (perhaps because he is blind, or looking the other way).
But when the examples are thus changed, his case seems much less plausible.
If I am asked to indicate what it would be righttosayabout Z-statements and the implications involved in these utteranccs, I shall answer: very much the same sort of thing as one may suggest as regards a disjunctive statement such as
"My wife is in the kitchen or in the bedroom."
The fulfilment of the relevant D-or-D condition is not a condition either of the truth or of the falsity of an Z-statement, though if this condition is not fulfilled the utterance of the l-statement may well be extremely misleading (in its implication).
Like
"Smith has beautiful handwriting."
or
"My wife is in the kitchen or in the garden."
we may speak either of THE UTTERER or of his saying what he did say as vehicles of the implication; the second of these possibilities is important in that, if I am right about it, it leads to another point.
The implication is not detachable in my official sense.
For IF the implication can be regarded as being carried by his saying that (rather than something else), e.g., his mentioning this fact or putative fact rather than some other fact or putative fact, it seems clear that any other way of stating the same fact or putative fact would involve the same implication as the original way of stating the fact in question.
Comparably with
"Smith has beautiful handwriting"
and
"My wife is in the kitchen or in the bedroom"
the implication is detachable in the further possible non-official sense which I referred to earlier in connexion with
"My wife is in the kitchen or in the bedroom";
There will be some conditions of utterance irr which the implication is no longer carried, e.g., if I am talking to my oculist, as we walk down High Street, about how the pillar box seems to me.
The implication is very cancellable, too!
As in the case of example
"My wife is in the kitchen or in the bedroom,"
the reason why the implication is standardly carried is to be found in the operation of some such general principle or desideratum or norm or rule or requirement or maxim of conversation as that giving preference to the making of a stronger rather than a weaker statement in the absence of a reason for not so doing.
The implication therefore is not of a part of the meaning of the expression "... seems to me."
There is however here an important difference between the case of Z-statements and that of disjunctives.
A disjunctive is weaker than either of its disjuncts in a straightforward logical sense, namely, it is entailed by, but does not entail, each of its disjuncts.
The statement
"That pillar box seems red to me."
is not, however, weaker than the statement
"That pillar box is red."
in just this way.
Neither statement entails the other.
I think that one has, neverthcless a strong inclination to regard the first ofthese statements as weaker than the second.
But I shall not here attempt to determine in what sense of " wgaker " this may be true.
The issue with which I have been mainly concerned may be thought rather a fine point, but it is certainly not an isolated one. There are several philosophical theses or dicta which would I think need to be examined in order to see whether or not they are sufficiently parallel to the thesis which I have been discussing to be amenable to treatment of the same general kind. Examples which occur to me are the following: (1) You cannot see a knife as a knife, though you may see what is not a knife as a knife. (2) When Moore said he knew that tl-re objects before him were human hands, he was guilty of misusing the word "know". (3) For an occurrence to be properly said to have a cause, it must be something abnormal or unusual. (4) For an action to be properly described as one for which the agent is responsible, it must be thc sort of action for which people are condemned. (5) What is actual is not also possible. (6) What is known by me to be the case is not also believed by me to be the case. I have no doubt that there will be other candidates besides the six which I have mentioned. I must emphasize that I am not saying that all these examples are importantly similar to the thesis which I have been criticizing, only that, for all I know, they may be. To put the matter more generally, the position adopted by my objector seems to me to involve a type of manoeuvre which is characteristic of more than one contemporary mode of philosophizing. I am not condemning this kind of manoeuvre; I am merely suggesting that to embark on it without due caution is to risk collision with the facts. Before we rush ahead to exploit the linguistic nuances which we have detcctcd, we should make sure that we are reasonably clcar what sort of nuanccs they are.
I hopc that I may have succeeded in disposing of what I have found to be a frequently propounded objection to the idea of explaining thc notion of a sense-datum in terms of some member or members of the suggested family of locutions.
Further detailed work would be needed to find the most suitable member of the family, and to select the appropriate range of uses of the favoured member when it is found; and, as I have indicated, neither of these tasks may be easy.
I shall, for present purposes, assume that some range of uses of locutions of the form
"... seems phi to me."
has the best chance of being found suitable.
I shall furthermore assume that the safest procedure for the Causal Theorist will be to restrict the actual occurrences of the term " sense-datum " to such classificatory labels as " sense-datum statement " or " sense-datum sentence "; to license the introduction of a " sense-datum terminology " to be used for the re-expression of sentences incorporating the preferred locutions seems to me both unnecessary and dangerous.
I shall myself, on behalf of the CTP, often for brevity's sake talk of sense-data or sense-impressions; but I shall hope that a more rigorous, if more cumbrous, mode of expression will always be readily available.
I hope that it will now be allowed that, interpreted on the lines which I have suggested, the thesis that perceiving involves having a sense-datum (involves its being the case that some sense-datum statement or other about the percipient is true) has at least a fair chance of proving acceptable.
I turn now to the special features of the CTP.
The flrst clause of the formulation quoted aboves from Price's Perception rnay be interpreted as representing it to be a necessary and sulficient condition of its being the case that X perceives M that X's sense-impression should be causally dependent on some state of affairs involving M.
Let us first enquire whether the suggested condition is necessary.
That pillar box seems red to me.
What more is required for it to be true to say that I sense a pillar box?
There must, one might say, actually BE a pillar box which is in X's field of view, before X's eyes.
But this does not seem to be enough.
For it is logically conceivable that there should be some method by which an expert could make it look to me as if there were a pillar box on occasions when there is none.
There might be some apparatus by which X's cortex could be suitably stimulated, or some technique analogous to post-hypnotic suggestion.
If such treatment were applied to me on an occasion when there actually is a pillar box on the corner, and if X's impressions were found to continue unchanged when the pillar box is removed or its position altered, I think we should be inclined to say that X did not SEE the pillar box which is before his eyes, just because we should regard the pillar box's redness as playing no part in the origination of his impression.
Or, to leave the realm of fantasy, it might be that it looked to me as if there were a certain sort of pillar box in a certain direction at a certain distance, and there might actually be such a pillar box in that place; but if, unknown to me, there were a mirror interposed between myself and the pillar box, which reflected a numerically different though similar pillar box, it would certainly be incorrect to say that I SEE the first pillar box, and correct to say that I see the second pillar box; and it is extremely tempting to explain this linguistic fact by saying that the first pillar box is, and the second pillar box is not, causally irrelevant to the way things seem to me.
There seems then a good case for allowing that the suggested condition is necessary; but as it stands it can hardly be sufficient.
For in any particular perceptual situation there will be objects other than that which would ordinarily be regarded as being perceived, of which some state or mode of functioning is causally relevant to the occurence of a particular sense-impression: this might be true of such objects as the percipient's eyes or the sun.
So some restriction will have to be added to the analysis of perceiving which is under consideration.
Price suggested that use should be made of a distinction between " standing " and "differential" conditions.
As the state of the sun and of the percipient's eyes, for example, are standing conditions in that (roughly speaking) if they were suitably altered, all the visual impressions of the percipient would be in some respect different from what they would otherwise have been; whereas the state of the perceived object is a differential condition in that a change in it would affect only some of the percipient's visual impressions, perhaps only the particular impression the causal origin of which is in question.
The suggestion then is that the CTP should hold that an object is perceived if and only if sorne condition involving it is a diferential condition of some sense-impression of the percipient.
I doubt, however, whether the imposition of this restriction is adequate.
Suppose that on a dark night I see, at one and the same time, a number of objects each of which is illuminated by a different torch.
If one torch is tampered with, the effect on my visual impressions will be restricted, not general; the objects illuminated by the other torches will continue to look the same to me.
Yet we do not want to be compelled to say that each torch is perceived in such a situation; concealed torches may illuminate.
But this is the position into which the proposed revision of the CTP would force us.
I am inclined to think that a more promising direction for the CTP to take is to formulate the required restriction in terms of the way in which a perceived object contributes towards the occurrence of the sense-impression.
A conceivable course would be to introduce into the speciflcation of the restriction some part of the specialist's account, for example to make a lclerence to the transmission of light-waves to the retina; but thc objection to this procedure is obvious; if we are attempting to characterize the 'ordinary'-language notion of perceiving or sensing, or seeing or seeming, we should not cxplicitly introduce material of which someone who is perfectly capable of employing the 'ordinary'-language notion might be ignorant.
I suggest that the best procedure for the Causal Theorist is to indicate the mode of causal connexion by examples; to say that, lirl an object to be perceivedby X, it is suffrcient that it should be e:rusitlly involved in the generation of some sense-impression by .\' in thc kind of way in which, for example, when I look at my lr:rncl in a good light, my hand is causally responsible for its kroking at n1e as if there were a hand before me, or in which . . . (and so on), whatever that kind of way may be; and to be enlightened on that question one must have recourse to the specialist.
I see nothing absurd in the idea that a non-specialist concept should contain, so to speak, a blank space to be filled in by the specialist; that this is so, for example, in the case of the concept of seeing is perhaps indicated by the consideration that if we were in doubt about the correctness of speaking of a certain creature (say a Martian with four eyes) with peculiar sense-organs as "seeing" objects, we might well wish to hear from a specialist a comparative account of the human eye and the relevant sense-organs of the creature in question.
We do not, of course, ordinarily need the specialist's contribution; for we may be in a position to say that the same kind of mechanism is involved in a plurality of cases without being in a position to say what that mechanism it is.
lt might be thought thar we need a further restriction, limiting the permissible degree of divergence between the way things seem to X and the way they are.
But objects can be said to be seen even when they are looked at through rough thick glass or distorting spectacles, in spite of the fact that they may then be unrecognizable.
At this point an objcction must be mentioned with which I shall deal only briefly, since it involves a manoeuvre of the same general kind as that which I discussed at length.
The CTP as I have so expounded it, it may be said, requires that it should be linguistically correct to speak of the causes of sense-impressions which are involved in perfectly normal perceptual situations.
But this is a mistake.
It is quite unnatural to talk about the "cause," say, of its seeming to me as if there were a pillar box before him unless the situation is or is thought to be in some way abnormal or delusive.
This being so, when a cause can, without speaking unnaturally, be assigned to an impression, it will always be something other than the presence of the perceived object.
There is no natural use for such a sentence as " The presence of a pillar box causes it to seem to X as if there were a pillar box before him."
Yet it is absolutely essential to the CTP that there should be.
In reply to this objection I will make three points.
If we are to deal sympathetically with the CTP we must not restrict the Causal Theorist to the verb 'cause.'
We must allow him to make use of other mernbers of the family of causal or causative verbs or verb phrases if he wishes.
This family includes such expressions as " accounts for ", " explains ", " is part ofthe explanation of", " is partly responsible for ", and it seens quite possible that some alternative formulation of the theory would cscape this objection.
In fact, a similar argument can be made in defense of Aristotle's rather peculiar use of 'cause.' (aition), by Owens, of all people!
If I regard myself as being in a position to say "There is a pillar box", of " I see a pillar box",I naturally rcfrain from making the weaker statement
" It looks to me as if there were a pillar box before me ", and so, a fortiori, I refrain from talking about the CAUSE of its seeming to me thus.
But, if I was right earlier, to have made the weaker statement would have been to have said something linguistically correct and true, even if misleading; is there any reason against supposing that it could have been linguistically correct and true, even if conversationally function-less, pointless or misleading, to have ascribed to a particular CAUSE the state of affairs reported in the weaker 'seeming' statement?
X is standing on a corner of High Street up which a giraffe is approaching.
He thinks his eyes must be 'deceiving' him.
Knowing this, I say to X,
" The fact that it seems to you as if there is a giraffe approaching is accounted for by the fact that a giraffe (straight from the travelling circus) is approaching, not by your having become deranged."
To say the same thing to one's neighbour at the circus would surely be to say something which is true, though it might be regarded as provocative, and as not deeming rational as he thinks he is.
I have extracted from the first clause of the initial formulation ol' the CTP an outline of a causal analysis of perceiving or sensing or seeing which is, I hope, at least not obviously unacceptable.
I have of course oonsidered the suggested analysis only in relation to "seeing a pillar box (as) red"; a ntore careful discussion would have to pay attention to perception other than 'seeing'; and even within the field of visual perception tlrc suggested analysis might well be unsuitable for some uses of llrr: word'see', which would require a stronger condition than llrat proposed by the theory.
And some a weaker one:
Macbeth saw Banquo.
Hamlet saw his father on the rampant of Elsinoe.
Although here what the utterer DIS-IMPLIES is key.
Is the CTP, as so far expounded, open to the charge that it lt';'r'cscnts material objects as being in principle unobservable, and irr ctlrrscclucnce leads to scepticism about the material world?
I Ir:rve sornc difliculty in understanding the precise nature of the accusation, in that it is by no means obvious what, in this context, is meant by " unobservable ".
It would be not unnatural to take " unobservable " to mean " incapable of being perceived ".
Now it may be the case that one could, without being guilty of inconsistency, combine the acceptance of the causal analysis of perceiving with the view that material objects cannot in principle be perceived, if one were prepared to maintain that it is in principle impossible for material objects to cause sense-imprcssions but that this irnpossibility has escaped the notice of common sense.
This position, even if internally consistent, would seem to be open to grave objection.
But even if the proposition that material objects cannot be perceived is consistent with the causal analysis of perceiving, it certainly does not appcar to be a consequence of the latter; and the exposition of the CTP has so far been confined to the propounding of a causal analysis of perceiving.
The critic might be equating " unobservable " with " not directly observable "; and to say that material objects are not directly observable might in turn be interpreted as saying that statements about material objects lack that immunity from factual mistake which is (or is supposed to be) possessed by at least some sense-datum statements.
But if " unobservable " is thus interpreted, it seems to be true that material objects are unobservable, and the recognition of this truth could hardly be regarded as a rnatter for reproach.
" Observation " rnay be contrasted with " inference " as a source of knowledge and so the critic's claim may be that the CTP asserts or implies that the existence of particular material objects can only be a matter of inference.
But in the first place, it is not established that the acceptance ofthe causal analysis ofperceiving commits one to the view that the existence of particular material objects is necessarily a matter of inference (though this view is explicitly asserted by the second clause of Price's initial formulation of the CTP); and secondly, many of the critics have been phenomenalists, who would themselves be prepared to allow that the existence of particular material objects is, in some sense, a matter of inference.
And if the complaint is that the CTP does not represent the inference as being of the right kind, then it looks as if the critic might in effect be complaining that the Causal Theorist is not a Phenomenalist.
Apart from the fact that the criticism under discussion could now be made only by someone who not only accepted Phenomenalism but also regarded it as the only means of deliverance from scepticism, it is by no means clear that to accept a causal analysis of perceiving is to debar oneself from accepting Phenomenalisnr; tlrere seelns to be no patent absurdity in the idea that one could, as a first stage, offer a causal analysis of ' X perceives M', and then re-express the result in phenomenalist terms.
If the CTp is to be (as it is often regarded as being) a rival to Phenomenalism, the opposition may well have to spring from the second clause of the initial formulation of the theory.
There is a further possibility of interpretation, related to the previous one.
If someone has seen a speck on the horizon which is in fact a battleship, we should in some contexts be willing to say that he has seen a battleship; but we should not, I think, be willing to say that he has OBSERVED (such a Latinate!) a battleship unless l.re has recognized what he has seen as a battleship.
The criticism lcvelled at the CTP may then be that it asserts or entails the irnpossibility in principle of knowing, or even of being reasonably assured, that one is perceiving a particular material object, even if one is in fact perceiving it.
At this point wc must direct our attention to the second clause of the initial fonnulation of the CTP, which asserted that " perceptual consciousness is fundarncntally an inference from effect to cause ".
I shall assume (l hope not unreasonably) that the essence ofthe view here being advanced is that anyone who claims to perceive a particular rttatcrial object M may legitimately be asked to justify his claim; attd that the only way to meet this demand, in the most fundatttcntal type of case, is to produce an acceptable argument to tfrc cffect that the existence of M is required, or is probably rcrprired, in order that the claimant's culretlt sense-impressions sltor.rld be adequately accounted for.
A detailed exposition of thc CTP may supplement this clause by supplying general lttirrciplcs which, by assuring us of correspondences bctween ('iruscs and effects, are supposed to make possible the production ol' sirtisf actory arguments of the required kind.
It is clcar that, if the Causal Theorist proceeds on the lines rvlrich I lravc just indicated, he cannot possibly be accusecl of having asserted that material objects are unobservable in the sense under consideration; for he has gone to some trouble in an attempt to show how we may be reasonably assured of the existence of particular material objects.
But it may be argued that (in which is perhaps a somewhat special sense of " consequence ") it is an unwanted consequence of the CTP that material objects are unobservable: for if we accept the contentions of the CTP (1) that perceiving is to be analysed in causal terms, (2) that knowledge about perceived objects depends on causal inference, and (3) that the required causal inferences will be unsound unless suitablc gcneral principles of correspondence can be provided, then wc shall havc to admit that knowledge about perceived objects is unobtainable: for the general principles offered, apart frorn beirrg dubious both in respect of truth and in respect of status, fail to yield the conclusions for which they are designed; and more successful substitutes are not available.
If this is how the criticism of the CTP is to be understood, then I shall not challenge it, though I must confess to being in some doubt whether this is what actual critics have really meant.
My comment on the criticism is now that it is unsympathetic in a way that is philosophically important. There seem to me to be two possible ways of looking at the CTP. One is to suppose an initial situation in which it is recognized that, while appearance is ultimately the only guide to reality, what appears to be the case cannot be assunred to correspond with what is the case.
The problem is conceived to be that of exhibiting a lcgitimate method of arguing from appearance to reality. The CTP is theu regarded as a complex construction designed to solvc tlris problem; and if one part of the structure collapses, the renrainder ccases to be of much interest.
The second way of looking at the CTP is to think of the causal analysis of perceiving as sonrething to be judged primarily on its intrinsic merits and not merely as a part of a solution to a prior epistemological problem, and to recognize that some version of it is quite likely to be correct; the remainder of the CTP is then regarded as consisting (l) of steps which appear to be forced upon one if one accepts the causal analysis of perceiving, and which lead to a sceptical difficulty, and (2) a not very successful attempt to meet this difficulty.
This way of looking at the CTP recognizes the possibility that we are confrontcd with a case in which the natural dialcctic elicits distressing conscquences (or rather apparent consequences) front truc propositious.
To adopt the first attitude to tl-re exclr-rsion of thc sccond is both to put on one side what uray well bc an acccptablc bit of philosophical analysis and to neglect what might bo ar.r opportunity for deriving philosophical profit from the exposurc of opcrations of the natural dialectic.
This, I suggest, is what the critics have tended to do; though, no doubt, they might plead historical justification, in that the first way of looking at the CTP may have been that of actual Causal Theorists.
It remains for me to show that the CTP can be looked upon in the second way by exhibiting a line of argument, sceptical in clraracter, which incorporates appropriately the elements of the CTP. I offer the following example. In the fundamental type of case, a bona fide claim to perceive a particular material object M is based on sense-datum statements; it is only in virtue of the occurrence of certain sense-impressions that the claimant would rcgard himself as entitled to assert the existence of M.
Since the causal analysis of perceiving is to be accepted, the claim to pcrceive -M involves the claim that the presence of M causally cxplains the occurrence of the appropriate sense-impressions.
'l'hc combination of these considerations yields the conclusion tlrat the claimant accepts the existence of M on the grounds that it is required for the causal explanation of certain senseirnpressions; that is, the existence of M is a matter of causal irrlbrence from the occurrence of the sense-impressions.
Now a nrtlclcl case of causal inference would be an inference from smoke to fire -- I love Peirce!
The acceptability of such an inference involves the possibility of establishing a correlation between occurrences ol'srnoke and occurrences of fire, and this is only possible because llrcrc is a way of establishing the occurrence of a fire otherwise llrrur by a causal inference.
I love Stevenson!
But there is supposed to be no way ol'cstablishing the existence of particular material objects except hy :r causal inference from sense-impressions; so such inferences t :r n not bc rationally justifled.
The' specification of principles of tollcspondence is of course an attempt to avert this consequence Iry rc.jccting the smoke-fire model. [If this model is rejected, r('('()ut'sc ntay be had to an assimilation of material objects to such entities as electrons, the acceptability of which is regarded as being (roughly) a matter of their utility for the purposes of explanation and prediction; but this assimilation is repugnant for the reason that material objects, after having been first contrasted, as a paradigm case of uninvented entities, with the theoretical constructs or entia rationis of the scientist, are then treated as being themselves entia rationis.
One possible reaction to this argument is, of course, " So much the worse for the causal analysis of perceiving "; but, as an alternative, the argument itself may be challenged, and I shall conclude by mentioning, without attempting to evaluate, some ways in which this might be done.
It may be argued that it is quite incorrect to describe rnany of my perceptual beliefs (e.g., that there is now a table in front of me) as " inferences " of any kind, if this is to be taken to imply that it would be incumbent upon me, on demand, to justify by an argument (perhaps after acquiring further data) the contention that what appears to me to be the case actually is the case.
When, in normal circumstances, it looks to me as if there were a table before me. I am entitled to say flatly that there is a table before me, and to reject any demand that I should justify my claim until specific grounds for doubting it have been indicated.
It is essential to the sceptic to assume that any perceptual claim may, without preliminaries, be put on trial and that innocence, not guilt, has to be proved; but this assumption is mistaken.
The allegedly 'fundamental' case (which is supposed to underlie other kinds of case), in which a perceptual claim is to be establishable purely on the basis of some set of sense-daturn statements, is a myth; any justification of a particular perceptual claim will rely on the truth of one or more further propositions about the material world (for example, about the percipient's body).
To insist that the ' fundamental' case be selected for consideration is, in effect, to assume at the start that it is conceptually legitimate for me to treat as operl to question all my beliefs about the material world at once; and the sceptic is not entitled to start with this assumption.
It might be questioned whether, given that I accept the existence of M on the evidence of certain sense-impressions, and given also that I think that M is causally responsible for those sense-impressions it follows that I accept the existence of M on the grounds that its existence is required in order to account for the senseimpressions.
The use made of the smoke-fire model in the sceptical argument might be criticized on two different grounds.
First, if the first point in this paragraph is well made, there are cases in which the existence of a perceived object is not the conclusion of a causal inference, namely those in which it cannot correctly be described as a matter of inference at all.
Secondly, the model should never have been introduced: for whereas the proposition that fires tend to cause smoke is supposedly purely contingent, this is not in general true of propositions to the effect that the presence of a material object possessing property P tends to (or will in standard circumstances) make it look to particular persons as if there were an object possessing P.
It is then an objectionable feature of the sceptical argument that it first treats non-contingent connexions as if they were contingent, and then complains that such connexions cannot be established in the manner appropriate to contingent connexions.
The non-contingent character of the proposition that the presence of a red (or round) object tends to make it look to particular people as if there were something red (or round) before them does not, of course, in itself preclude the particular fact that it looks to nre as if there were something red before me from being explained by the presence of a particular red object.
It is a non-contingent nratter that corrosive substances tend to destroy surfaces to which thcy are applied; but it is quite legitimate to account for a particular case of surface-damage by saying that it was caused by some corrosive substance.
In each case the effect might have corrrc about in some other wav.
I conclude that it is not out of the question that the following vcrsion of the CTP should be acceptable:
It is true that X lrclccives M if, and only if, some present-tense sense-datum slltcrncnt is true of X which reports a state of affairs for which ,4/, in a way to be indicated by example, is causally responsible, irrrtf (2) a clairn on the part of Xto perceive M,lf it needs to be irrstiliccf at all, is justified by showing that the existence of M is r ct;uirccl ii the circumstances reported by certain true sense-datum statements, some of which may be about persons other than X, are to be causally accounted for.
Whether this twofold thesis deserves to be called a Theory of Perception I shall not presume to judge;
I have already suggested that the first clause neither obviously entails nor obviously conflicts with Phenomenalism.
I suspect that the same may be true of the second clause.
I am conscious that my version, however close to the letter, is very far from the spirit of the original theory.
But to defend the spirit as well as the letter would be beyond my powers.
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