Epistemological Disjunctivism

Along with what J. McDowell has called the disjunctive conception of experience (DCE), and against a venerable tradition, the veridical experience that P and the subjectively indistinguishable hallucination that P are not type-identical mental states. According to McDowell, a powerful motivation for DCE is that it makes available the sole internalistically acceptable way out of a sceptical argument targeting the possibility of perceptual knowledge. In this paper I state in explicit terms the sceptical argument McDowell worries about, and show that DCE has not the epistemological merits that McDowell ascribes to it. To begin with, I join a series of commentators in arguing that the way out of the sceptical argument made available by DCE is not internalistically acceptable, and so argue that it is not a way out that an internalist about epistemic justification would have any special reason to prefer to a parallel externalist way out that does not commit to DCE. Secondly, I show that the internalist can resist the sceptical argument by denying a different premise of it that McDowell takes for granted. I conclude by maintaining that McDowell's epistemological motivation for DCE is undercut.

近年来，经验科学领域的诸多理论创新给传统知识论领域的讨论提供了许多可贵的借鉴，也带来一些挑战。泰勒·伯吉就主张，新近流行的关于知觉经验的析取主义方案与相应的经验科学研究方法不相容。知识论析取主义的主要倡导者麦克道尔对此给予回应，他认为，伯吉混淆了经验科学与知识论对 “解释相关”的不同理解，而自己的 析取主义方案可以免于伯吉的诘难。本文通过对这一争论的细致梳理，试图论证麦克道尔对伯吉的回应是不成功的，但知识论析取主义可以基于对知觉经验的构成性理解，与以具身认知为范式的经验科学研究相容。这场争论为我们理解经验科学研究与哲学理论建构之间的关系提供了有益借鉴。

在知觉知识研究领域，强怀疑论一直以来都是难以解决的问题，诸多理论都试图对这一问题给出解答，却 都差强人意。近年来，知识论析取主义作为一种新的知觉知识研究进路方兴未艾，其代表人物麦克道尔通过对强怀 疑论论证做出一个合理的“诊断”，澄清了一个长久以来对于知觉经验的误解，从而消解了提出这一问题的合理性基 础，为强怀疑论的解决给出了新的可能。但他的解决方案也遭受了一些反驳，如赖特就认为他并没有“真正认真对待 怀疑论”，并不比摩尔的回应做的更好。笔者将试图为麦克道尔做出某种辩护，指出赖特的指责是建立在对麦克道尔 的误解之上，忽视了麦克道尔论证的先验面向。在笔者看来，知识论析取主义的确为强怀疑论问题的解决提供了一 个更好的方案。

Since its first formulation in the 1980’s, the disjunctivist theory has slowly but steadily changed the way philosophers think about perception. Fundamentally, the disjunctivist view is a negative metaphysical thesis about the nature of perceptual experience: it is based on a refutation of the so-called ‘common kind claim’, that is to say, the claim – held by conjunctivists– that perceptions, illusions and hallucinations are conscious experiences of the same fundamental kind. Given the importance granted to perceptual experience in the phenomenological tradition, a few commentators have, in recent years, attempted to situate the phenomenological point of view vis-à-vis these two positions. While Romano (2012) and Bower (forthcoming) have argued that Husserl’s conception of illusions and hallucinations entails a form of conjunctive analysis, Smith (2008), Hopp (2011) and Overgaard (2018) attempted to show that Husserl’s theory of perception amounts to a kind of disjunctivism avant la lettre. In this paper, I side with Staiti (2015) and Zahavi (2017) and argue that the very opposition between conjunctivism and disjunctivism is hardly thinkable on Husserlian grounds. After brushing in very rough strokes Husserl’s normative theory of perception, I defend this claim with two arguments. The first – dubbed the metaphysical argument – targets one core metaphysical commitment of both conjunctivism and disjunctivism, namely their defense of metaphysical realism. In short, I argue that this commitment is incompatible with Husserl’s phenomenology, whether before or after the transcendental turn, for which reason I suggest that Husserl cannot reasonably be held to defend either position. The second argument – called the phenomenological argument – targets another presupposition shared by both parties, namely the idea that ‘perfect hallucinations’ are possible. I lay out a series of reasons as to why this idea should be resisted, and then explain how this impacts the discussion between disjunctivism and conjunctivism.

幻觉论证一直是知觉知识研究领域的难题，而近年来兴起的知识论析取主义无疑为其解决提供了新的视 角。幻觉论证具有其普遍的形式，同时又可以依据论证目的的不同进行不同的构造; 笔者将尝试重构针对知觉知识 的幻觉论证，试图说明对“内在不可分辨”概念内容的不同界定可以分辨出强弱不同的两种幻觉论证版本，并对幻觉 论证背后的核心直觉进行分析; 以麦克道尔和普里查德为代表的知识论析取主义进路针对幻觉论证做出了不同于传 统内在主义或外在主义进路的回应，但在笔者看来，他们的回应至多只能对弱版本的幻觉论证加以说明，却并不能有 效地解决强版本的幻觉论证; 笔者将分析知识论析取主义进路失败的深层原因，并尝试给出可能的修正策略。

On a standard view a subject's evidence or reasons determines what there is justification to believe and there is only justification to believe when there is strong evidential support. The standard view is wrong about the role that evidence and reasons play. While the reasons that bear on whether to believe determine what there is justification to believe, such reasons are not pieces of evidence and they do not supervene upon a subject's evidence.

This paper explores religious belief in connection with epistemological disjunctivism. It applies recent advances in epistemological disjunctivism to the religious case for displaying an attractive model of specifically Christian religious belief. What results is a heretofore unoccupied position in religious epistemology—a view I call 'religious epistemological disjunctivism' (RED). My general argument is that RED furnishes superior explanations for the sort of 'grasp of the truth' which should undergird 'matured Christian conviction' of religious propositions. To this end I first display the more familiar perceptual epistemological disjunctivism (PED), contrasting it with both externalist and classically internalist views. This prepares the way for introducing RED with its own distinctive factive mental state operator—pneuming that p. In this second section I present the RED model, not failing to address a potential problem concerning religious disagreement. I also clarify RED's distinctive internalist aspect, describing how it comports with contemporary internalist thinking in epistemology. I then move in section three to criticize externalist and classical internalist views, showing where they fail to make proper sense of the sort of knowing which should ground mature Christian conviction. Specifically, I highlight three intuitions which I think any theory of religious belief should capture: what I call the case-closed intuition, the good believer intuition, and the Plantingian platitude. This is all to set up for the final section where I argue that RED is superior for understanding proper religious believing— capturing the aforementioned intuitions.

La obra de John McDowell ha sido una de las más influyentes en los últimos 30 años principalmente en la filosofía del lenguaje y de la mente, pero también en la epistemología, donde sus reflexiones han resultado especialmente polémicas. Uno de los aspectos que más controversia ha suscitado es su particular manera de lidiar con el tradicional desafío escéptico: McDowell ha reiterado en nume-rosas ocasiones que no le interesa desarrollar tesis ni posiciones antiescépticas, pero al mismo tiempo dedica mucho tiempo y esfuerzo en tratar de mostrar la incorrección del escepticismo. Es por ello que en este trabajo me ocupo de lo que considero son los dos episodios más emblemáticos del antiescepticismo de McDowell: una estrategia neomooreana y otra (la más reciente) trascendental. A este primer episodio (1982, 1994a, 1994b y 2001) lo caracterizo como una estrategia antiescéptica que apela a una concepción disyuntivista de la experiencia para apuntalar el conocimiento perceptual y así concluir-en contra del escéptico-, que cuando un sujeto percibe verídicamente que p (que tiene manos, por ejemplo), es porque p es el caso y el sujeto sabe que p. Esta estrategia antiescéptica tiene la misma estructura que la célebre prueba del mundo externo desarrollada por Moore, de ahí que en adelante me referiré a ella como la "estrategia neomooreana de McDowell". En contra de esta primera estrategia antiescéptica, argumento que no es exitosa por dos razones: en primer lugar, porque comete petición de principio frente al escéptico, pero no por las razones que Wright (2002) ha señalado, sino debido a su apelación al disyuntivismo, que no es más que una versión del externismo respecto de los contenidos mentales.
Versiones previas de este trabajo fueron presentadas en distintos foros: Bogotá (2009), Mérida (ALFAn 2010), IIF-UNAM (2010). Agradezco a las correspondientes audiencias por sus comentarios. Igualmente agradezco los comentarios y críticas de Pedro Stepanenko, los cuales contribuyeron a enriquecer este texto. Esta investigación fue posible gracias a una beca posdoctoral de la UAM-I.

This paper aims for a more robust epistemological disjunctivism (ED) by offering on its behalf a new and better response to the 'new evil genius' problem. The first section articulates the 'new evil genius challenge' (NEG challenge) to ED, specifying its two components: the 'first-order' and 'diagnostic' problems for ED. The first-order problem challenges proponents of ED to offer some understanding of the intuition behind the thought that your radically deceived duplicate is no less justified than you are for adopting her perceptual beliefs. In the second section, I argue that blamelessness explanations are inadequate to the task and offer better explanations in their place—that of 'trait-level virtue' and 'reasonability'. The diagnostic problem challenges proponents of ED to explain why it is that classical internalists disagree with them about how to interpret new evil genius considerations. The proponent of ED owes some error theory. I engage this problem in the third section, arguing that classical internalists are misled to overlook disjunctivist interpretations of new evil genius thinking owing to a mistaken commitment to a kind of 'vindicatory' explanation of proper perceptual belief.

This paper investigates the extent to which ancient philosophers hold positions similar to contemporary epistemological disjunctivism.  It argues that there are some a priori reasons to think that ancient philosophers might be amenable to the disjunctivist position, even if their motivations for holding such a position may be quite different from that of contemporary philosophers.  The body of the paper focuses on the Stoics and their notion of the "cataleptic impression" as a criterion of truth. It compares the Stoic arguments against their Academic skeptical opponents with contemporary epistemological disjunctivism, particularly as it is developed in the work of John McDowell.

The paper discusses some themes in Duncan Pritchard's last book, Epistemic Angst.
Radical Skepticism and the Groundlessness of Our Believing. It considers it in relation
to other forms of Wittgenstein-inspired hinge-epistemology. It focuses, in particular, on
the proposed treatment of Closure in relation to entailments containing hinges, the
treatment of Underdetermination-based skeptical paradox and the avail to disjunctivism
to respond to the latter. It argues that, although bold and thought-provoking, the mix of
hinge epistemology and disjunctivism Pritchard proposes is not motivated.

According to epistemological disjunctivism I can claim to know facts about the world around me on the basis of my perceptual experience. My possession of such knowledge is incompatible with a number of familiar skeptical scenarios (for example, that I am currently being deceived by an evil demon). So a paradigmatic epistemological disjunctivist perceptual experience should allow me to rule out such incompatible skeptical scenarios. In this paper, I consider skeptical scenarios which both cast doubt on my conviction that I can trust my purported perceptual experiences and appear to be compatible with my enjoying a veridical perceptual experience of my environment. Such skeptical scenarios draw attention to a significant difference between McDowell's epistemological disjunctivism and Pritchard's. McDowellian epistemological disjunctivism has the resources to rule out such skeptical scenarios but Pritchard's cannot. This is because the Pritchardian epistemological disjunctivist does not, unlike McDowell, insist on the idea that perception is a fallible capacity, self-consciously exercised and possessed, for knowledge.

Epistemological disjunctivists make two strong claims about perceptual experience's epistemic value: (1) experience guarantees the knowledgeable character of perceptual beliefs; (2) experience's epistemic value is "reflectively accessible". In this paper I develop a form of disjunctivism grounded in a presentational view of experience, on which the epistemic benefits of experience consist in the way perception presents the subject with aspects of her environment. I show that presentational disjunctivism has both dialectical and philosophically fundamental advantages over more traditional expositions. Dialectically, presentational disjunctivism resolves a puzzle disjunctivists face in their posture vis-à-vis skeptical scenarios. More systematically, presentational disjunctivism provides an especially compelling view of disjunctivism as an internalist view of perceptual consciousness by explaining the way perceptual presence manifests the subject's rationality in a distinct way.

In this paper, I consider the so-called Access Problem for Duncan Pritchard’s Epistemological Disjunctivism (2012). After reconstructing Pritchard’s own response to the Access Problem, I argue that in order to assess whether Pritchard’s response is a satisfying one, we first need an account of the notion of ‘Reflective Access’ that underpins Pritchard’s Epistemological Disjunctivism. I provide three interpretations of the notion of Reflective Access: a metaphysical interpretation, a folk interpretation, and an epistemic interpretation. I argue that none of these three interpretations comes without problems. I conclude that, until we have a clear and unproblematic account of Reflective Access, the Access Problem remains a challenge for Pritchard’s Epistemological Disjunctivism.

It has been objected recently that naïve realism is inconsistent with an empirically well-supported hypothesis that unconscious perception is possible. Because epistemological disjunctivism is plausible only in conjunction with naïve realism (for a reason I provide), the objection reaches it too. In response, I show that the unconscious perception hypothesis can be changed from a problem into an advantage of epistemological disjunctivism. I do this by suggesting that: (i) naïve realism is consistent with the hypothesis; (ii) the contrast between epistemological disjunctivism and epistemic externalism explains the difference in epistemic import between conscious and unconscious perception.

According to epistemological disjunctivism (ED), ordinary perceptual experience ensures an opportunity for perceptual knowledge. In recent years, two distinct models of this idea have been developed. For Duncan Pritchard (2012, 2015), perception provides distinctly powerful reasons for belief. By contrast, Clayton Littlejohn (2016, 2017, 2018) and Alan Millar (2010, 2011) argue for a version of ED in terms of a "knowledge first" program, on which perception directly provides knowledge, without relying on antecedent reasons or justification. Specifically, both Littlejohn and Millar argue that "reasons first" ED faces a problematic regress. In this paper I defend "reasons first" ED by arguing that experience provides a type of reason that escapes the regress. I also argue that reasons are a fundamental aspect of ED, especially in its anti-skeptical stance.

My contribution to an author meets critics discussion of Duncan Pritchard's _Epistemological Disjunctivism_ coming out in Journal of Philosophical Research.  The discussion looks at the possible costs and benefits of epistemological disjunctivism. Explores the question as to whether E=K might have all the benefits with none of the costs. (See related paper, 'Epistemological Disjunctivism and the Basis Problem's Basis' for arguments that perceptual beliefs aren't based on reasons.

La epistemologia disyuntivista de John McDowell ofrece una respuesta al escepticismo sobre el conocimiento perceptual del mundo, a partir de un argumento a favor de la no anulable pretension de objetividad de la experiencia. Propuesta que resulta plausible desde el punto de vista epistemologico. Adicionalmente, McDowell insiste en la necesidad de incorporar un argumento trascendental (“depurado de idealismo”) para refutar definitivamente dicho escepticismo. Paul Snowdon ha esclarecido el alcance de este planteamiento –y del disyuntivismo en general– y ha formulado las preguntas oportunas acerca los presupuestos y compromisos empiricoteoreticos de McDowell, cuya relacion con su enfoque epistemologico no queda del todo clara. Este articulo parte de las preguntas de Snowdon, procurando mostrar que uno de los principales presupuestos del “punto de vista trascendental”, pretendido por McDowell, descansa en su recepcion de una “radicalizacion” del trascendentalismo kantiano, tal como se p...

Epistemological disjunctivism, as defended by e.g. McDowell, Neta and Pritchard, is the view that epistemic justification can be -- and in paradigmatic cases of perceptual knowledge actually is -- both factive (i.e. entails that the belief is true) and reflectively accessible (i.e. can be known by reflection alone). One major problem for this view is the access problem: Apparently, epistemological disjunctivism entails that ordinary external world propositions can be known by reflection alone. According to epistemological disjunctivism, seeing that the sun is shining is reflectively accessible and seeing that the sun is shining entails that it is. Assuming closure of reflective knowledge under known entailment it is also reflectively knowable that the sun is shining. Drawing on joint work with Neta, Pritchard replies that disjunctivism is not committed to this absurdity, but only to the possibility of reflective access to empirical reasons. In this paper I offer an interpretation of this reply, but also an objection to it: My interpretation is based on applying the source/content distinction to epistemic reasons. My objection is based on arguing that the access problem is a problem for any (non-sceptical) version of access internalism. Although Pritchard's reply solves the general access problem, it does not solve the access problem that is generated by the specific commitments of epistemological disjunctivism. Due to the transparency of self-knowledge of propositional perception epistemological disjunctivism cannot meet a central requirement for applying the source/content distinction.

Epistemological disjunctivists (such as Duncan Pritchard and John McDowell) make appeal to Moorean-style anti-skeptical arguments. It is often held that one problem with using Moorean-style arguments in the context of a response to skepticism is that such arguments are subject to a kind of epistemic circularity. The specific kind of epistemic failure involved has come to be known as a failure of warrant transmission. It would likely pose a problem for the anti-skeptical ambitions of the epistemological disjunctivist if his version of the Moorean-style argument failed to transmit warrant; but no epistemological disjunctivist has oofered an argument to show that this is not so. In this paper, I fill the gap by arguing that warrant transmits across epistemological disjunctivist Moorean-style arguments.

It is possible that one is currently radically deceived-that one is a BIV, say-and that one has no inkling of this because one cannot distinguish between being a BIV and having normal unenvatted experiences. One would thus occupy, entirely unbeknownst to one, what we might refer to as the epistemic shadowlands, where one's experiences seem like normal veridical experiences of the world around one, but are in fact highly deceptive. What is the rational standing of one's beliefs in the shadowlands? According to the new evil demon intuition, the rational standing ought to be on a par with-and certainly no worse than-the rational standing of the beliefs of one's unenvatted counterpart. This intuition is in direct conflict with epistemological disjunctivism since this view holds that the rational support that one's beliefs enjoy, in the best case, can be factive reasons which entail the truth of the (empirical) belief in question. This is clearly not a kind of rational support which is going to be available to one's envatted counterpart. This paper explores the relationship between epistemological disjunctivism and the new evil demon intuition and argues for a principled way of accounting for why the rational standing of one's envatted counterpart's beliefs is impoverished in comparison to the rational standing of one's own beliefs. Along the way, we also explore how epistemological disjunctivism is related to the more general--and, I argue, completely distinct--project of offering a theory of knowledge.

The aim of this paper is twofold: first, it is intended to show that a strong version of epistemological disjunctivism about perceptual knowledge implies a transformative conception of rationality. This entails that individuals in skeptical scenarios could not entertain rational thoughts about their environment, for they would fail to have perceptual states. The secondary aim is to show that this consequence is not a sufficient reason to abandon the variety of disjunctivism presented. The argument for this claim depends on the assessment of rationality attributions to subjects in plausible cases of illusion and some clinical cases of hallucination.

This paper critically surveys 20 years of recent work on radical skepticism. It focuses on three key issues. First, it starts by exploring how philosophers have recently challenged our understanding of radical skeptical arguments. It then unpacks and critical evaluates some influential reactions to radical skepticism: knowledge-first epistemology, epistemological disjunctivism, and hinge epistemology. Third, it explores some novel developments of pragmatism, gauges its anti-skeptical import, and reflects on the ways in which radical skeptical epistemology and ethics might meet.

Based on Pritchard's distinction (2012, 2016) between favoring and discriminating epistemic grounds, and on how those grounds bear on the elimination of skeptical possibilities, I present the dream argument as a moderate skeptical possibility that can be reasonably motivated. In order to block the dream argument skeptical conclusion, I present a version of phenomenological disjunctivism based on Noë's actionist account of perceptual consciousness (2012). This suggests that perceptual knowledge is rationally grounded because it is a form of embodied achievement – what I call embodied rationality –, which offers a way of dissolving the pseudo-problem of epistemic immodesty, namely, the seemingly counterintuitive thesis that one can acquire rationally grounded knowledge that one is not in a radical skeptical scenario.

Is nature creation or merely the product of non-intentional, natural processes? Mats Wahlberg argues that our perceptual experiences of nature can settle this question in favor of creation. He suggests that biological nature has expressive properties of a kind similar to human behavior and art. We may therefore be able to perceive – directly – nature as creation, i.e. as expressive of the mind of a creator. This idea resonates with the traditional Christian claim that God’s invisible nature can be ‘clearly perceived in the things that have been made’ (Rom 1:20). Wahlberg’s interpretation of this claim contradicts the common view that the existence of a creator must be established by inferential argument. 

The book’s thesis is compatible with the fact that biological organisms have evolved by natural selection. Its viability depends, however, on the rejection of certain common assumptions about the nature of mind and perception – assumptions that may properly be called ‘Cartesian’. The author presents and defends an anti-Cartesian stance on mind and perception, inspired mainly by the work of the philosopher John McDowell. The philosophical resources provided by this stance are then drawn on to defend the book’s version of natural theology.