Reasons, Perceptual Grounds, and Normative Explanation

Reasons come in many forms. There are reasons to believe, for believing, for which one believes, and why one believes; and some are internal reasons we have, others external reasons we lack. This chapter clarifies how we have normative reasons for beliefs in virtue of certain experiential states that ground those reasons: these states, including sense-experiences and hedonic experiences, are the kinds that ground the rationality of beliefs or the desirability of acts. Normative reasons, practical as well as theoretical, are themselves grounded in certain experiential elements, including perceptions as a central kind. Normative reasons for belief are unified by their explanatory scope: they can explain propositional justification—roughly, justification that at least permits our properly believing propositions adequately supported by our experience. These normative explanations parallel causal explanations that hold between the experiential elements, such as perceptions, that ground the reasons and the doxastically justified beliefs that reflect those experiences.

Conclusion

Perception is central in our engagement with the world. It is experiential, representational, and causally connected with its objects. It is a discriminative sensory response to multifarious phenomena in our experience of the world. Perceptual experience embodies phenomenally distinctive states. Those states, as phenomenally representational and discriminatively responsive to our environment, have a kind of content by which they guide us as agents in the physical realm. In these ways, and most prominently in its phenomenal elements, perception is mental, in the broad sense that entails some engagement of the mind. But I have distinguished the mental from the intellectual and argued that perception is neither fundamentally intellectual nor, in its simplest forms, belief-entailing....

Apriority, Disputability, and Necessity

This chapter shows how the self-evident and, by extension, a priori propositions in general may plausibly be considered necessary. These propositions are best taken to have, as truthmakers, abstract objects and their interrelations. It is also argued that the a priori may be plausibly taken to extend to certain normative truths and to many propositions that, like some perceptual principles discussed in earlier chapters, belong to philosophy itself. As the case of philosophy well illustrates, when a priori propositions are substantive, there may be widespread rational disagreement on them. This is especially clear if, as argued here, beliefs can be rational even if not sufficiently well-grounded to be justified. This possibility implies that someone may rationally, though unjustifiedly, reject even certain self-evident propositions. How this happens is explained, and the chapter also shows both difficulties in identifying rational disagreements and some prospects for resolving them.

Toward a Theory of the A Priori

Self-evident propositions are important in their own right and crucial for the a priori in general. They are here shown to be justifiedly believable and knowable on the basis of adequately understanding them. Such understanding is multidimensional, and its adequacy in relation to a self-evident proposition, p, is explicable only on the basis of at least these cognitive variables, each of which is illustrated in appropriate relations to p: recognitional range regarding applications of p; the sense of rejectability of purported equivalents; explicative capacity; logical comprehension; confirmational sensitivity; discriminative acuity; translational capacity; readiness to meet objections to p; and, considerability (a kind of contemplatability needed to get p appropriately “in mind”). The account of adequate understanding also helps in explicating understanding in empirical cases, even propositions perceptually believed. The self-evident is shown to differ from the obvious, and thereby as neither necessarily compelling conviction nor limited to formal or other non-substantive truths.

The Autonomy of Justification

This chapter clarifies similarities and differences between justification and knowledge. Justification is characteristically produced in ordinary perceptual experiences, but similar sensory justification can occur without any external object as cause. Here the justifying elements remain accessible to the subject by introspection or reflection, and they are adducible in a process of justifying beliefs about ostensibly perceived objects. Knowledge is not process-relative in the same way. Perceptual knowledge can indeed arise where justificatory processes are not possible for the knower. It is also external in requiring actual causal connections to relevant truthmaking facts. This external causal grounding may yield a reliable route to truth without providing, as is normal, internally accessible grounds of justification. Justification, then, is autonomous in a certain way relative to knowledge, as the latter is autonomous in a certain way relative to the former. Their similarities and common co-occurrence must not be allowed to obscure our view of their differences.

Perceptual Levels and Their Action-Theoretic Counterparts

Chapter 3 explains how perceptions are like actions in that some are, for a given perceiver at a given time, basic and others not. In neither case are the relevant by-relations—seeing x by seeing y and doing one thing by doing another—inferential. It is shown, however, that these points allow for our concepts and theories to influence perception. Several interpretations of theory-ladenness are described, and the chapter argues that perception itself is not inferential or, necessarily, theory-laden in depending on a theory or theoretical concepts. Our theories can influence what we perceive, particularly by leading us to see something as a theory says it is; but much as action constitutes a direct way in which, however complicated the causal underpinnings, we intervene in the world, perception constitutes a direct way in which, however long and complicated the causal conditions for it, the world intervenes in the mind.

Dimensions of Perceptual Content

This chapter presents a causal theory of perception according to which perceiving something is, in outline, equivalent to its producing or sustaining, in the right way, a phenomenal representation of it. Commonly, the perceived object plays this causal role reliably enough to yield perceptual knowledge, provided we form perceptual beliefs that appropriately correspond to what we see. But the theory does not imply that seeing is conceptual, entails believing, or has propositional perceptual content. The notion of content is clarified, and several types are described, including a hallucinatory kind. This causal representational view also accommodates “inner perception” of elements, such as images—as is appropriate to the breadth of “perception.” But the most important point here is that explaining the causal character of the perceptual relation partly on the basis of information represented in the phenomenal character of the perceptual experience does not entail the perceiver’s acquiring beliefs that propositionalize that information.

Knowing, Reasoning, and Doing

This chapter draws on earlier ones in developing a critique of intellectualism, especially as applied to the philosophy of action. For intellectualism, theoretical knowledge is more basic than practical knowledge, and action, at least if performed for a good reason, must be knowledge-guided and not just guided by otherwise appropriate beliefs. Intellectualism is shown too strong on at least three counts. Knowing how is not reducible to knowing that; knowledge is not required for premises of practical reasoning; and (normative) reasons for action need not be factive, much less constituted by known propositions. These conclusions by no means imply that knowledge is not important for understanding action and practical reasoning, especially rational action and good practical reasoning. It is also true that intentional actions correspond to (possibly hypothetical) practical reasoning; but this point is shown to be very different from the intellectualist view that they are based on actual practical reasoning.

Perception, Intuition, and Apprehension

This chapter brings the theory of perception developed in Chapters 1 to 6 to bear on clarifying intuition, especially regarding abstract elements. Intuitive apprehension of these elements has much in common with perception. Such intuition is structurally parallel to perception, and it is experientially representational in a way that enables it to confer, as does perception, (prima facie) justification on beliefs. Moreover, both perception and intuitive apprehension are non-inferential, hence not premise-based. Both, given their status as embodying sensory or intuitive seemings, yield (and can explain) inclinations to believe and can explain belief-formation. Like perceptions, intuitions (in their occurrent forms) are direct responses to something one considers or otherwise experiences; they are not inferential responses to a premise. As experiential, non-inferential, and phenomenally representational, intuitions can confer justification on beliefs. This ascription of directness to intuitive apprehensions goes well with their role in explicating the self-evident—which, in certain cases, is paradigmatically intuitive—and thereby in accounting for a priori justification and knowledge.

Inference and Its Role in Rational Action

Action, like knowledge, is portrayed in this chapter as having grounds, but neither acting nor knowing requires a basis in inference. We can view agency as information-responsive, reasons-responsive, and rational without endorsing such intellectualist views. Acting for a reason need not be reasoned action. Beliefs or perceptible cues can guide intentional action without constituting knowledge. Intentions may have wide scope and complex content, much as beliefs can have complex propositional objects, and this enables a single intention to govern multiple deeds. Rational actions, moreover, are immensely various, extending to things we do rationally, without these actions being reason-based or even intentional. Granted, learning how to do many of the important things we do, say in speaking, playing instruments, and hiking, normally requires gaining propositional knowledge along the developmental route. Nonetheless, some propositional knowledge is like a ladder that, once having climbed up on it, we can do without.