Sense and Sensibilia, Chapters VIII and IX

On Wednesday the workshop met to discuss a short paper of Russell Rolff’s on Timothy Williamson and chapters VIII and IX in Austin’s Sense and Sensibilia. What follows is a summary of our discussion of Austin.

Jason was our lone faculty representative because David was off giving a paper in Scandinavia. He (Jason) began discussion by focusing attention on Austin’s argument against Ayer’s claim that there are “different senses” of “’perceive’ and other verbs designating modes of perception” (87). Ayer wants to argue for the claim that sense-data talk is just a “clearer and more convenient” way of talking about the objects of perception (87). How does he reach that conclusion? Austin presents Ayer’s argument as follows:

1. There are several different senses of the word “perceive”: In one sense of the word, saying that I perceive an object means that “it is necessary that what is seen should really exist, but not necessary that it should have the qualities that it appears to have”; while in another sense, “it is not possible that anything should seem to have qualities that it does not really have, but also not necessary that what is seen should really exist”.

2. Some philosophers use the word “perceive” or “see” as a kind of mongrel version of both senses of “see” just described. That is, they use “see” and “perceive” in such a way that it has the sense that what is seen must exist, and that it must have the properties that it appears to have (86). But since in delusive situations, what is “seen” either doesn’t really exist or doesn’t have the properties it appears to have, they are thereby obligated to find an object that both exists and has the relevant properties. That object is a sense-datum.

3. Next, these philosophers “find it ‘convenient’, Ayer says, ‘to extend this usage to all cases’, on the old, familiar ground that ‘delusive and veridical perceptions don’t differ in ‘quality’” (87).

4. So, in all cases of perception, “the objects of which one is directly aware are sense-data and not material things…[this] enables us only to refer to familiar facts in a clearer and more convenient way”.

Austin fastens on Ayer’s claim that there are different senses of “perceive” and “see”. Austin denies that the evidence that Ayer offers in support of this claim establishes that there are different senses for “perceive” and “see”. discusses a number of different examples given by Ayer in support of the claim that there are different senses of “perceive”. For each example, Austin tries to show that instead of finding different senses of “see” or “perceive”, there are other perfectly acceptable ways of avoiding apparent incompatibility.

For example, Ayer says “If I say that I am perceiving two pieces of paper, I need not be implying that there really are two pieces of paper there” (89). Interestingly, Austin agrees with Ayer on this point, that we can say that we are perceiving two pieces of paper without thereby implying that there really are two pieces of paper we are seeing, as in a case of double vision (90).

But Austin stops short of finding a different sense of “perceive” in this case. He says that in normal circumstances, saying that you perceive two pieces of paper entails that there are two pieces of paper, but “we may have to stretch our ordinary usage to accommodate” the “exceptional case” of double vision (90-91). He then says that to say “I am perceiving two pieces of paper” in the case of double vision is to say that faute de mieux (for lack of something better), and that “the fact that an exceptional situation may thus induce me to use words primarily appropriate for a different, normal situation is nothing like enough to establish that there are, in general, two different, normal (‘correct and familiar’) senses of the words I use” (91).

Jason was quick to point out that this line of handling the different senses of “perceive” seems at odds with the way that neo-Austinians like Charles Travis want to handle similar situations by saying that words do have different senses (truth-conditions) in different circumstances.

That is part of Austin’s response to Ayer’s claim that there is a sense of “perceive” that does not require that the object that is said to be perceived actually exist. He then takes up Ayer’s claim that there is a sense of “perceive” that does not entail that the object seen has the characteristics (properties) it appears to have.

Austin then discusses Ayer’s case of a man, gazing into the starry heavens, says both (a) “I see a distant star which has an extension greater than that of the earth”; and (b) “I see a silvery speck no bigger than a sixpence”. Since nothing can both be a silvery speck no bigger than a sixpence and have an extension greater than that of the earth, Ayer says that “one is tempted to conclude that one at least of these assertions is false” (92). Of course, Ayer (like Austin) thinks that both assertions can be true, and he tries to make room for the truth of both statements by saying that there are two different senses of “see” at work in this case, one which does not require that the thing seen have all the properties which it appears to have (this is the sense present in (a)), and one according to which “it is not possible that anything should seem to have qualities that it does not really have, but also not necessary that what is seen should really exist” (94). This second sense is supposed to be the sense operative in (b), above—the case of the silvery speck.

What does Austin say about this case? Though he finds the first sense “a bit obscure”, he thinks it is “probably all right”. He focuses his attention on the second sense. He first observes that saying that you see a silvery speck “of course ‘implies’ that the speck exists” (94). And then he says that there is no legitimate distinction that can be drawn between merely seeming to be no bigger than a sixpence and being no bigger than a sixpence (95-96). I take the point of Austin’s observation to be that the best way to understand “I see a silvery speck no bigger than a sixpence” is as “I see a silvery speck that appears no bigger than a sixpence” (if I remember correctly, Will suggested something like this in the workshop). So it looks like Austin is saying that rather than find multiple senses for “see”, we find different senses of “is” here. Austin takes this to show that there is no second sense of “sees” as suggested by Ayer.

Jason then asked about the intriguing footnote on p. 95. Austin says:

“What about seeing ghosts? Well, if I say that cousin Josephine once saw a ghost, even if I go on to say I don’t ‘believe in’ ghosts, whatever that means, I can’t say that ghosts don’t exist in any sense at all. For there was, in some sense, this ghost that Josephine saw. If I do want to insist that ghosts don’t exist in any sense at all, I can’t afford to admit that people ever see them—I shall have to say that they think they do, that they seem to see them, or what not”.

Jason thought this was odd. If you say that cousin Josephine once saw a ghost, why not say that you’re saying something that is obviously false and implicating that she believes that she saw one? That way we needn’t have to say, even in some sense, that there was a ghost that Josephine saw. That sounded reasonable enough—those who believe in ghosts, even in some sense, don’t need any aid and comfort from ordinary language philosophy.

The workshop will meet again on May 31 to discuss the rest of Sense and Sensibilia and a paper by Rachel Goodman.

Tom Baldwin: Perception, Reference, Causation

Professor Thomas Baldwin (University of York) will give a talk, "Perception, Reference, and Causation" to the Mind Workshop tomorrow night.

J.L. Austin, Sense and Sensibilia, Chapters V-VII

Last night the workshop met to discuss chapters V-VII in J.L. Austin's Sense and Sensibilia, after Jay and I talked about McTaggart's argument for the unreality of time.

David F. was at bat tonight. He started discussion by pointing to Austin's discussion, in chapter VII, of the word "real". Austin convincingly shows that for sentences containing the word "real", "you can't tell what I mean just from the words I use; it makes a difference, for instance, whether [certain other contextual conditions hold]" (65). Austin makes a point of contrasting this feature of sentences containing the word "real" (a feature it shares with certain other words, like "good") with sentences like "This is pink". Austin says that "whereas we can just say of something 'This is pink', we can't just say of something 'This is real'" (69).

But is the contrast that Austin draws correct? That is, is it right to say that we can just say of something that it is pink? If you say "The book is pink", is there only one way that the world has to be in order for the sentence to be true? It doesn't seem so. The book might have a pink dust jacket, pink pages, a pink title on the spine, and so on. And merely supplying a substantive for "real" to attach to, e.g., "That is a real duck", doesn't yet pick out only one way that the world could be make the sentence true. For example (adopting an example from Travis), an utterance of "That's a real duck", said while demonstrating a decoy duck, would be false if the speaker was trying to distinguish decoys from living ducks; but an utterance of the same sentence, said while demonstrating the same decoy, might be true if the speaker was trying to distinguish decoy ducks from decoy coots (duck look-alikes).

David pointed to Austin's discussion of the statement "That isn't the real colour of her hair" (65). David said that you could delete each occurrence of "real" in the passage without any change in the significance of the passage. For example, consider the passage with every occurrence of "real" omitted:

"But suppose (a) that I remark to you of a third party, 'That isn't the colour of her hair.' Do I mean by this that, if you were to observe her in conditions of standard illumination, you would find that her hair did not look that colour? Plainly not--the conditions of illumination may be standard already. I mean of course, that her hair has been dyed, and normal illumination just doesn't come into it at all. Or suppose that you are looking at a ball of wool in a shop, and I say, 'That's not its colour'. Here I may mean that it won't look that colour in ordinary daylight; but I may mean that wool isn't that colour before its dyed."

There was some dispute about whether David's bold claim was correct, but it does seem correct to think that "real" does not contrast as clearly with other terms like "pink" or "colour of her hair" that Austin wants to contrast it with. There was some discussion of how best to characterize the difference between sentences containing "real" and sentences not containing it.

Next, we found fault with Austin's treatment of the "cricket" example on p. 64. Austin compares the word "real" with the word "cricket", and says that "words of this sort have been responsible for a great deal of perplexity". He then says,

"Consider the expressions 'cricket ball', 'cricket bat', 'cricket pavilion', 'cricket weather'. If someone did not know about cricket and were obsessed with the use of such 'normal' words as 'yellow', he might gaze at the ball, the bat, the building, the weather, trying to detect the 'common quality' which (he assumes) is attributed to these things by the prefix 'cricket'. But no such quality meets his eye; and so perhaps he concludes that 'cricket' must designate a non-natural quality, a quality not to be detected in any ordinary way but by intuition."

But, it was pointed out (by Jason or David or Jay), if someone didn't know about any topic, including "yellow", then the person might gaze at yellow teeth, a yellow book, a yellow lightbulb, etc. and find no 'common quality' which is attributed to these things by the preflix 'yellow'. Of course, not knowing anything about cricket or yellow, a person might find the common quality shared by yellow things or all things cricket mysterious! Whereas, someone who knows about cricket or yellow would be able, presumably, to identify the shared quality involved--something having to do with the game of cricket, on one hand, and with yellowness, on the other.

As the workshop wound down, Jason and David were interested in finding out what our assessment of the book was. They both related stories from their grad student days where prominent philosophers (McDowell, Stroud) expressed their respect for the book. Jason and David said that they thought the book may be of more historical than lasting philosophical significance. There was some debate about that--Ben was the most eloquent defender of the book's lasting significance. He said that Austin demonstrates an admirably assiduous approach to philosophy that, instead of racing ahead and generating "results", stops and tries to work out what problems, if any, are actually being solved by the philosopher, and whether they are worth solving.

Lowe on McTaggart's Argument for the Unreality of Time

Last night, Jay and I presented some material on McTaggart's argument for the unreality of time. What follows is part of what we talked about.

McTaggart’s Argument
1. Time essentially involves change.
2. Change can only be explained in terms of A-series expressions.
3. A-series expressions involve contradiction and so cannot describe reality.
4. So time is unreal.

Lowe wants to resist (4). He does so by denying (3). But his denial of (3) requires altering McTaggart’s account of (2) to explain how change can only be explained in terms of A-series expressions. Lowe’s argument can therefore be broken down into two parts. Part I: Denying that A-series expressions involve contradiction. Part II: explaining how change essentially involves A-series expressions.

PART I: Denying that A-series expressions involve contradiction

1. McTaggart’s argument for (3) involves the following claims:

a. The predicates “is past”, “is present” and “is future” all apply to all events

b. These predicates are inconsistent

2. An initial response: “past”, “present”, and “future” do not apply to all events at the same time.

3. Two versions of this response:

a. A-series version, second-level tenses: Event e is present (in the present), is future (in the past), and is past (in the future).

b. B-series version, indexing tenses to dates: Event e is present in 2006, is future in 1978, and is past in 2034.

4. Traditional problems with each response:

a. Traditional problem with A-series version (given by Dummett): The contradiction is not eliminated. Event e is not only present (in the present), it is also past (in the present) and future (in the present); or it is not only future (in the past), but past (in the past) and present (in the past). Each group of higher level A-series expressions is contradictory.

b. Traditional problem with B-series version: The contradiction is eliminated, but the A-series is reduced to the B-series. “Event e is present in 2006” is equivalent to “Event e is simultaneous with 2006”; “Event e is future in 1978” is equivalent to “Event e is after 1978”; and “Event e is past in 2034” is equivalent to “Event e is before 2034”.

5. Lowe’s new problems with each response:

a. A-series version: Higher-order tenses are incoherent (66). Tenses function like indexicals. Indexicals get their content from the context of utterance. The context of utterance cannot be shifted. David Kaplan says that attempts to shift the context in which indexicals get assigned their contents generate “monsters”. It doesn’t make sense to say that in the future, it is the present, just as it doesn’t make sense to say it is here over there or To you, I am you.

b. B-series version (Sorabji): Indexing A-series expressions to times is also incoherent, for the reasons just given. Saying “Event e is future in 1978” attempts to shift the context of utterance for “is future” back to 1978. But we can’t do that.

Jason worried that Lowe's intuitions about the incoherence of utterances like "In the future, 2006 will be past" were wrong. It seems perfectly possible to say something like, "Back in 1984, my college years were still in the future" without lapsing into incoherence.

PART II: Explaining how change essentially involves A-series expressions

7. McTaggart explained change in terms of future event e becoming present and receding into the past (68). But Lowe can’t use this explanation of change, because the idea of an event going from being present to being past is what generated the contradiction in the A-series. So how does Lowe explain change?

8. Lowe’s explanation of change in terms of sequences:

a. Lowe thinks he can show how change is essential to time in a way that it isn’t for space: “In all the possible space-time routes a person may take, the order of temporal positions will be the same, while the order of spatial positions may vary” (69).

i. A Worry: How does this show that change is essential to time, and not to space? It seems if anything it shows that change is essential to space, since the temporal sequences of the routes a person may take are always the same.

9. But granting that Lowe has shown that change is essential to time, why does he think that change essentially involves A-series expressions?

a. Lowe has explained how change is essential for time in terms of possible variations in space-time sequences: an active person may take sequence <(s1, t1), (s2, t2), (s3, t3)>, or a couch-potato may take sequence <(s1, t1), (s1, t2), (s1, t3)>, but both the active person and the couch potato will have sequences that must have the form <(-, t1), (-, t2), (-, t3)>. What about these sequences involves anything about the A-series? We could, for example, fill in the time variables with B-series dates: <(-, May 2, 2006), (-, May 3, 2006), (-, May 4, 2006)> (69). If the sequences that explain how time essentially involves change don’t essentially involve the A-series, then Lowe has rejected premise (2) in McTaggart’s argument, which he doesn’t want to do (63).

b. Lowe’s response: Routes are sequences of “spatio-temporal perspectives” (69). What does this mean? It means that routes can’t rely on anything like non-perspectival, non-tensed, non-indexical ways of specifying times (and locations?). Perspectival sequences would look like this: <(there, yesterday), (here, today), (there, tomorrow)>; <(here, yesterday), (here, today), (here, tomorrow)>.

Mind Workshop This Week: J.L. Austin and The Indexical Fallacy in McTaggart's Proof of the Unreality of Time

This week, the workshop will meet in Cobb 104 on Wednesday from 6-8pm to discuss pp. 44-77 of J.L. Austin's Sense and Sensibilia, as well as the following (short) papers on McTaggart's argument for the unreality of time:

E.J. Lowe, "The Indexical Fallacy in McTaggart's Proof of the Unreality of Time"
Michael Dummett, "A Defense of McTaggart's Argument for the Unreality of Time"
Peter Geach, selection from "Time" in Truth, Love, and Immortality

I'll send out the Geach as soon as I get it scanned.