DESCRIPCIÓN DE LAS ACTIVIDADES PARA PROCESOS Y

The kind of scepticism that Sartre finds an objectionable upshot of indirect realism is Humean, not Cartesian, scepticism. It is not, that is, the general worry that unless I can prove the reliability of belief in general, unless I can prove that I am not the dupe of a demon no less powerful than cunning and intent on deceiving me, then I cannot have any claim to knowledge. If Sartre had been aiming to overcome Cartesian scepticism by affirming a certain theory of experience, he would have failed: that theory itself could be a demon-induced false belief. It is rather the problem that if experience veils reality, then I cannot have knowledge of r e a lity .If this problem is to provide a motivation for embracing a Sartrean conception of experience as dependent on the mind-independent reality it is an apprehension of, as Sartre implies it does, then there are four questions that must be answered. First, exactly what is wrong with following Hume (1978, book 1 § 7) and simply embracing the scepticism? Second, if the scepticism is intolerable, why does that force an abandonment of mind-dependent appearances rather than, as Berkeley (1975, 108) suggests, an abandonment of reality beyond appearances in favour of a phenomenalist reality constructed out of mind-dependent appearances? Third, do current anglophone intentionalist theories of experience, which deny the existence of mind-dependent objects but nonetheless construe experience as independent of the reality it represents, succeed in overcoming the dualism? Fourth, does the Sartrean construal of experience as apprehension of mind-dependent reality avoid this scepticism?

Sartre’s answer to the first question is that the scepticism in question is embarrassing because it precludes the provision of a conclusive ontology of reality and our place in it. This point, it seems, is right. If reality is beyond experience, then the whole of the experiences we have are compatible with any number of alternative realities, and in the limiting case there may be no mind-independent reality at all. Since any claim about the nature of reality made on the basis of experience will be based on inference, and since inference is defeasible, it is difficult to see how one could be confident about any such claim. The evidence will be compatible with an alternative construal of reality (see McDowell 1982, § 11).^^ But this point in itself does not explain quite what is wrong with Humean scepticism. Why should the lack of a conclusive ontology be so objectionable as to motivate the rejection of a philosophical theory that leads to it? After all, so long as we can discern regularities in experience, we can predict and hence learn to control these regularities, and thereby develop all the science we need to enhance our lives. Medicine and technology have improved the human lot (in the West, at least) without a conclusive ontology of reality, so why should we be embarrassed by the lack of such an ontology?

There are three reasons why scientific success does not undermine Sartre’s claim that the lack of a conclusive ontology is an embarrassment to philosophy. First, Sartre is only worried about an embarrassment to

philosophy: he does not go as far as Kant’s claim that it is ‘a scandal to

philosophy and to human reason in general’ (1929, Bxxxix). Philosophy is that exercise of human reason that aims to provide an overall account of reality and our place in it, and so would clearly be embarrassed by an inability to do so. Moreover, a philosophical theory that provides such a theory would clearly be superior to any that does not, on the grounds that it would have a greater explanatory value, and this provides a pragmatic reason to avoid all theories that preclude conclusive ontology. Second, as Kim (1998, 59-60) points out, if a system of thought precludes our providing an account of some types of object or event — or, indeed, of reality in general — then there is clearly

something wrong with our system of thought. Overhauling it may lead to a deeper and more useful understanding of ourselves and our environment, and so lead to even greater scientific success. Third, many branches of science are — as their practitioners admit — young, in progress, and areas of much controversy. Science is far from complete, and perhaps revising our system of thought is necessary for its completion. Most artificial intelligence research, for example, is premised on the functionalist view that all mentality is manipulation of representations. If Sartre's conception of experience is correct, and consciousness is not simply a matter of hosting a representation that may or may not accurately reflect the seer’s environment, then the computers built in mainstream artificial intelligence research will never be conscious. The benefits for psychology of investigating the relations between mind and reality are even more obvious. We can agree with Sartre, then, that an inability to provide a conclusive ontology is an embarrassment to philosophy, and we can add that human reason in general may gain from the advancement of philosophy.

The answer to the second question is that phenomenalism must ultimately postulate some kind of reality beyond experience or it will fail to account for the fact that reality does not necessarily do what I want it to. Struggling with objects in order to bring about a desired end, Sartre claims, reveals ‘the resistance of things’ and the ‘coefficient of adversity’ in the world (B&N: 304, 324, 327). In action, I discover that the world can be manipulated only in accordance with certain laws that govern it and ‘does not depend on my whim’ (B&N: xxiii; see IPC: 1; STE: 62). The reality that I act on has some ‘principle of being’ (B&N: xxiii) that is responsible for its resistance to some of my efforts (see IPC: 1, 115; STE: 62-6; B&N: 179, 191, 197, 217).'" This point is reminiscent of Johnson’s attempt to refute Berkeleian idealism by kicking a stone: if the stone does not move, then it has some nature or being that is not dependent on my whim. Johnson’s point fails against Berkeley, however, because Berkeley claimed that the sequence of actual and possible appearances that makes up reality is regulated by God (1975, 85-6). The

stone does not move because God does not want it to. So ultimately Berkeley does not avoid the scepticism engendered by indirect realism, because Berkeley does not avoid postulating a reality that lies beyond and regulates experience. Berkeley's God, in fact, is Just one more postulate alongside Cartesian extended substance and Lockean atoms in a void, which together with other possibilities make up the list of possible extra-experiential realities between which we cannot definitively decide precisely because they are extra-experiential. But Husserl, according to Sartre, is vulnerable to Johnson’s critique, because Husserl, according to Sartre, is a phenomenalist who does not postulate any reality beyond appearance to account for their regularity and resistance to my efforts (B&N: 324).^^ Given this resistance, phenomenalism must postulate some extra-experiential reality.

Given that both indirect realism and phenomenalism generate Humean scepticism by postulating an extra-experiential reality required to account for the regularity of experience, the third question asked above remains: does anglophone intentionalism fare any better? This intentionalism is the view that experience consists in representation of reality which may or may not be accurate. The experience is independent of the reality it purports to represent on this view, since the same kind of experience may occur as either a perception or an hallucination. It is for this reason that intentionalism fares no better than indirect realism and phenomenalism. The scepticism engendered by indirect realism and phenomenalism is not an upshot of the fact that they postulate subjective objects of awareness, such as sense data or sensations. It is an upshot of the fact that the experience itself is independent of reality, and so is compatible with any of a list of possible realities. And this characteristic is preserved in current anglophone intentionalist theories. Although intentionalist theories all postulate a mind-independent reality that causes and is represented by perceptual experience, it remains that since the experience does not itself include this reality the nature of the reality cannot be discovered on the basis of experience. It remains possible, that is, that the reality in question is a Cartesian extended substance or a Lockean system of

atoms in a void. It even remains possible that the distinction between a perception and an hallucination is not due to some causal connection between the experience and reality being present only in the perceptual case, but is due to only perceptual experiences being parts of sequences of actual and possible experiences regulated by a Berkeleian God. The fact that this Berkeleian option is not currently taken by any intentionalists does not matter; it remains a possibility given the nature of experience as they construe it.

What is required to rule out this scepticism while preserving the construal of experience as representation of reality is the denial that perceptual experience is independent of reality, the denial that the same experience can occur as either a perception or an hallucination. We have seen that this denial is made by some current anglophone theorists who wish to preserve the claim that all experiences are representations generated within the skin, rather than embrace the Sartrean claim that perceptual experience is not generated within the skin but includes the object as a spatiotemporal part (2.1). But this form of disjunctivism agrees with Sartre that perceptual experience at least is direct apprehension of mind-independent reality, and the purpose of the present chapter is to ascertain whether Sartre has provided solid grounds for this claim. An argument in favour of Sartre’s disjunctivism as opposed to this anglophone disjunctivism will be provided in 3.3, but for present purposes it is sufficient to categorise the two theories together.

Given that Humean scepticism results from indirect realism, phenomenalism, and intentionalism, then, it remains to see whether construing experience as apprehension of mind-independent reality is sufficient to overcome this scepticism. For if it is not, the charge of scepticism can hardly be taken as a reason to reject these other theories in favour of this construal. It might be argued, following Nagel (1974), that unmediated access to reality is not sufficient for understanding all the facts that there are, on the grounds that there are subjective facts (such as those that describe what it is like to be a bat) that are available only from a viewpoint that we can neither occupy nor

imagine (such as that of a bat). But there is no need to engage with such claims in order to defend Sartre’s claim that construing experience as apprehension of mind-independent reality is sufficient to overcome Humean scepticism, for two reasons. First, if it is true that there are such unestablishable facts as what it is like to be a bat, such facts are not objective ontological facts: bat-ontology is exhausted in descriptions of the objective nature and structure of bats. Second, if it is true that there are such unestablishable facts as what it is like to be a bat, then this will impose a limitation on all attempts to delineate the structure of reality, including indirect realism, phenomenalism, and intentionalism. The construal of experience as apprehension of mind-independent reality would still allow a philosophical system superior to those premised on other conceptions of experience if it allows a delineation of the objective ontological facts when those other systems do not.

A more important challenge to Sartre’s anti-sceptical claim is that it might not go far enough. Overcoming Humean scepticism might require not only the claim that experience is apprehension of mind-independent reality, but the additional claim that experience is apprehension of the mind-independent structures of reality. This seems to be M cDowell’s claim when he recommends construing perceptual experience as apprehension of mind- independent facts, such as the fact that it is raining, as required to avoid Humean scepticism (1982). We have not yet decided the issues of whether Sartre considers reality to have a mind-independent structure, as opposed to mind-independent existence, and if so whether he considers it possible to capture that structure in thought and language. But it might seem nonetheless that his emphasis on the role of consciousness in constructing the world of ordinary experience will preclude him from understanding experience as the manifestation of mind-independent facts. But even if experience is not the manifestation of mind-independent facts, but only a manifestation of mind- independent being, this would not preclude the formulation of a definitive

ontology on the basis of experience. The nature of reality could be derived from the nature of experience by a combination of two approaches.

Because all perceptual experience, for Sartre, reveals mind-independent reality even though it distorts it, one approach would be to compare the experiences of a single subject over time and of different subjects in order to identify the features common to those experiences. The determinations applied by consciousness in experience are partly a result of experience and of the aims and projects of the perceiver, for Sartre, and so are not all universal among subjects. Sartre comes close to making this claim when he writes of objectivity as ‘the result of experimental measures and of the agreement of minds with each other' (B&N: 311). The only difficulty with this move would be if there were some necessary distortion common to all minds. But even so, this problem could be removed by the second way of identifying the nature of reality on the basis of distorting experiences: so long as the structures of experience can be identified, the ways in which it distorts the appearance of mind-independent reality can be identified, and hence the nature of reality can be identified by subtracting these distorting influences from the way reality seems. Sartre certainly does hold that the structures of experience can be identified: that is the aim of phenomenology. The extent to which they distort the appearance of reality could in principle be assessed by attempting to identify the structures of reality required for consciousness to have the structures it has.

I return to this point in the conclusions to the thesis (5.2), where I argue for a certain ontology to be ascribed to Sartre. All that matters for current purposes, however, is that McDowell’s claim that Humean scepticism can be overcome only by understanding experience as the manifestation of mind-independent facts is too strong. So long as experience is manifestation of mind- independent reality, so that nothing is in principle hidden from consciousness, Humean scepticism need not be engendered by allowing consciousness to be a distorting lens, so long as the ways in which it distorts can be ascertained.

Given that Sartre is right to claim that Humean scepticism can be avoided only by construing experience as apprehension of mind-independent reality, and given that the avoidance of Humean scepticism does, as Sartre points out, aid philosophy in its enterprise and may perhaps aid the advancement of human understanding in general, we can conclude that the avoidance of Humean scepticism does indeed provide a powerful motivation for embracing that conception of experience. The next two sections of this chapter are concerned with whether Sartre has also proven that we should embrace that conception of experience.