Wednesday, May 24, 2006
Out of action
LWBM will probably be off air for a little while; due to illness I will be off work until at least the end of May.
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
Going to Australia
I'm very pleased to be spending the next (British) academic year on secondment at the ANU. I'll be working on an ARC project, Epistemic Warrant, lead by Daniel Stoljar, Martin Davies and Crispin Wright. The project will focus on transmission of warrant, basic knowledge and entitlement.
Wednesday, May 03, 2006
Dogmatism and The Content of Experience
If I understand correctly (and I'm indebted to Sebastian Schmoranzer's recent Arche presentation for clarifying the following exegetical points) it is a tenet of Pryor's dogmatism (as represented in this paper) that certain of my experiences give me a reason to believe I have hands, and this regardless of any antecedent warrant I may have for thinking that I am not hallucinating, not a brain in a vat, etc.. Why? Because my experience represents it as being the case that I have hands.
However, my experience's 'representing it as being the case that I have hands' cannot amount to its being as it would be if I had hands, lest we be able to construct a parallel argument to the effect that experience gives me a reason to believe I am a brain in a vat being fed perfectly hand-like sensations.
The standard response to this seems to be that although my experience is as it would be if I were that kind of brain in a vat, my experience does not represent it as being the case that I am that kind of brain in a vat in the way it represents it as being the case that I have hands. That is, the content of my experience is that I have hands, not that I am a brain in a vat having hand-like experiences.
This seems to raise a puzzle: how do we spell out the notion of content required? If it is purely something about (my relationship to) the external world that makes the difference between having an experience with content 'I have hands' and having an experience with content 'I am a brain in a vat having hand-like experiences', then the 'standard response' just described appears to collapse the dogmatist line into a familiar kind of disjunctivist response to scepticism.
On the other hand, suppose we try to use inferential role (assuming that to be something internally accessible) to distinguish the two contents. Then the important thing about the inferential role of the content of the experience I'm actually having is presumably going to include things like the fact that I can correctly infer from the content of this experience to the conclusion that I am not a handless brain in a vat, which is something I cannot infer from the content of an experience which represents it as being the case that I am a brain in a vat having hand-like experiences.
However, it seems to be blantantly begging the question against the sceptic to assume without further comment that I am presently having an experience the content of which enables me to correctly infer that I am not a handless brain in a vat. This is exactly what the sceptic doubts my experience is like.
So what other stories about the difference in content are available for the dogmatist to tell here?
However, my experience's 'representing it as being the case that I have hands' cannot amount to its being as it would be if I had hands, lest we be able to construct a parallel argument to the effect that experience gives me a reason to believe I am a brain in a vat being fed perfectly hand-like sensations.
The standard response to this seems to be that although my experience is as it would be if I were that kind of brain in a vat, my experience does not represent it as being the case that I am that kind of brain in a vat in the way it represents it as being the case that I have hands. That is, the content of my experience is that I have hands, not that I am a brain in a vat having hand-like experiences.
This seems to raise a puzzle: how do we spell out the notion of content required? If it is purely something about (my relationship to) the external world that makes the difference between having an experience with content 'I have hands' and having an experience with content 'I am a brain in a vat having hand-like experiences', then the 'standard response' just described appears to collapse the dogmatist line into a familiar kind of disjunctivist response to scepticism.
On the other hand, suppose we try to use inferential role (assuming that to be something internally accessible) to distinguish the two contents. Then the important thing about the inferential role of the content of the experience I'm actually having is presumably going to include things like the fact that I can correctly infer from the content of this experience to the conclusion that I am not a handless brain in a vat, which is something I cannot infer from the content of an experience which represents it as being the case that I am a brain in a vat having hand-like experiences.
However, it seems to be blantantly begging the question against the sceptic to assume without further comment that I am presently having an experience the content of which enables me to correctly infer that I am not a handless brain in a vat. This is exactly what the sceptic doubts my experience is like.
So what other stories about the difference in content are available for the dogmatist to tell here?
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