From here on, I shall discuss McDowell’s views in Mind and World as an example of a position diametrically opposed to Block’s and to the whole idea of qualia, that is, of nonconceptual phenomenal characters common to both veridical and nonveridical experiences.39 To see the
prob lem to which I just alluded, let us recall that McDowell motivates
37. Hilary Putnam, “Corresponding with Real ity,” in Philosophy in an Age of Science:
Physics, Mathematics, and Skepticism, ed. Mario De Caro and David Macarthur (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2012), 72–90.
38. A great deal in this direction has been done by Tyler Burge in Origins of Objectivity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).
39. Block himself usually takes “repre sen ta tionalists,” particularly “intentionalists” like Tye, as his chosen targets; however, these phi los o phers are not in total disagreement with Block because they do believe veridical and hallucinatory experiences (to take the extreme case of the nonveridical) have a common phenomenal character, although they identify that phenomenal character with information; disjunctivists such as McDowell are in total dis- agreement with Block’s views because they deny both that sensory impressions are noncon- ceptual and that there is such a “highest common factor.”
his complex chain of arguments in Mind and World by laying down two requirements for a satisfactory philosophy of perception. The fi rst, which he calls “minimal empiricism,” is that sensory impressions must be a “tribunal” before which our beliefs about the world can stand,40
and much of the controversy connected with that book has to do with McDowell’s claim that this requirement can only be fulfi lled if those impressions are themselves conceptualized.41 The second (which is sup-
posed to follow from the fi rst) is that “reliabilism” must be rejected, because in the reliabilist view, McDowell charges, experience only “exculpates” the subject from criticism for having the beliefs her im- pressions cause her to have, but fails to justify those beliefs. This is the central argument of Mind and World: sense impressions (the “tribunal” before which all our beliefs have to stand) can justify beliefs only if those sense impressions are themselves justifi ed.
In opposition to McDowell’s views, Hilla Jacobson and I have argued, on both empirical and conceptual grounds, that the phenomenal char- acters of perceptual experiences are not (in any case, not always) conceptualized in any of the senses McDowell has proposed;42 hence,
if McDowell is right, they cannot be a “tribunal,” whether or not those phenomenal characters are identical with qualia. So, if McDowell is right, skepticism threatens us. Moreover, qualia, Block taught us, are brain states, and hence internalistically identifi ed. We might, of course, say that having (appropriate) qualia only counts as perceiving something when they are caused in the right way; but didn’t I criticize that idea previously when I wrote that to say, “When we have the appropriate
40. Minimal empiricism, which McDowell endorses, “makes out that the very idea of thought’s directedness at the empirical world is intelligible only in terms of answerability to the tribunal of experience, conceived of in terms of the worlds impressing itself on per- ceiving subjects.” Quote from John McDowell, Mind and World (Cambridge, Mass.: Har- vard University Press, 1996), xvi. Note the (nonaccidental) similarity of “impressing itself” and “impressions.”
41. McDowell generally uses “impressions” and “experiences” interchangeably (he also sometimes uses the Kantian term “intuitions,” particularly in the essays collected as Having
the World in View; Essays on Kant, Hegel, and Sellars (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 2009). In Mind and World, he identifi es “intuitions” with “bits of experiential intake” (pp. 4 and 6) and “impressions” with “impacts of the world on our senses” (139).
42. Hilla Jacobson and Hilary Putnam, “Against Perceptual Conceptualism,” paper read (by Hilla Jacobson) at the conference “Philosophy in an Age of Science: Conference in Honor of Hilary Putnam’s 85th Birthday,” Harvard and Brandeis Universities, June 30– July 4, 2011; forthcoming in the International Journal of Philosophical Studies.
visual sense data, and we unconsciously and automatically infer that there is a table in front of us, then that is what we ordinarily call ‘seeing a table’ ” is “not a rejection of Russell’s metaphysical picture at all, but simply a recommendation that Russellians fi nd a way of expressing their view that is more charitable to ordinary ways of speaking?” So it looks as if we have both handed game, set, and match to the skeptic and fallen back into Russell’s picture.
My present view is almost the complete opposite of McDowell’s. (1) Where McDowell requires that “impressions” must be a tribunal, I ar- gued in Chapter 10 that it is apperceptions (and seeming- apperceptions) that are the tribunal, and not impressions.43 Some apperceptions and
seeming- apperceptions do, indeed, include the occurrence of qualia (or “impressions,” to use McDowell’s term, but without assuming the meta- physics that goes with it), but such cognitive states are not the same as qualia, nor, as we argued in Chapter 10, are they simply beliefs “trig- gered” by qualia.44 The idea that “impressions” are the ultimate source
of the confi rmation and disconfi rmation of empirical beliefs is a hang- over from empiricism that should be jettisoned.
(2) Unlike McDowell, I don’t agree that reliabilism must be com- pletely rejected, as I will explain in the next section. That does not mean that we should accept the view I rejected above, according to which perceiving (for example) a rabbit on one’s lawn is just having the appropriate visual “sense data” and unconsciously and automatically in- ferring that there is a rabbit on the lawn in front of one. But this issue deserves a section to itself.