Perception as a Capacity for Knowledge

by John McDowell

Perception as a Capacity for Knowledge is the 2011 Aquinas Lecture delivered by John McDowell on February 27, 2011 at Marquette University. Professor McDowells Lecture is the 75th in this esteemed series hosted by the Philosophy Department at Marquette. Past lecturers include Mortimer Adler, Anton. C. Pegis, Yves Simon, Jacques Maritain, Etienne Gilson, Bernard Lonergan, S.J., John N. Findlay, Alvin Plantinga, Paul Ricoeur, Alasdair MacIntyre, Louis Dupre, Myles Burnyeat, and Margaret Urban Walker.

A central theme in much of Professor McDowells work is the harmful effects, in modern philosophy and in the modern reception of premodern philosophy, of a conception of nature that reflects an understanding, in itself perfectly correct, of the proper goals of the natural sciences. In a number of contexts, he has argued that we can free ourselves from the characteristic sorts of philosophical anxiety by recalling the possibility of a less restrictive conception of what it takes for something to be natural.

Genres: Philosophy

57 pages, Hardcover

First published February 11, 2011

About the author

John H. McDowell (MA, Oxford) is University Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh. Before coming to Pittsburgh in 1986, he taught at University College, Oxford. He has held visiting appointments at Harvard University, the University of Michigan, UCLA, and Princeton University. He was the John Locke Lecturer at Oxford University in 1991. His major interests are Greek philosophy, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, metaphysics and epistemology, and ethics. He is a fellow of the British Academy and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Reviews

[robin friedman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Revisiting The Aquinas Lectures

When I lived in Milwaukee many years ago, I attended the University of Wisconsin -- Milwaukee and majored in philosophy. I discovered an annual lecture in philosophy delivered under the auspices of Marquette University -- another Milwaukee institution of higher learning -- titled the Aquinas lectures. Marquette has been presenting an annual Aquinas lecture since 1933, and the list of speakers is long and distinguished indeed. One spring day in 1968, I walked to Marquette and heard Bernard Lonergan, S.J. deliver in a large, crowded auditorium his Aquinas lecture titled "The Subject". Lonergan remains an important philosophic voice.

I was reminded of the Aquinas lectures in a roundabout way when I read Richard Bernstein's book, "The Pragmatic Turn" (2010). Among the many philosophers Bernstein discusses is John McDowell, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh. I was intrigued by Bernstein's discussion and wanted to learn about McDowell. I found a number of books here on Amazon, including "Mind and World" (1994); but my attention was drawn to this little book of McDowell's, "Perception as a Capacity for Knowledge" which is the text of the Aquinas lecture McDowell delivered at Marquette in February, 2011. Marquette keeps each lecture in print through the publication of small, uniform hardbound editions. I was delighted to read McDowell while revisiting vicariously Milwaukee and the Aquinas lectures.

I remember little of the lecture of Lonergan that I heard in 1968 other than that it was difficult. The same is true for McDowell's 2011 lecture. It is short but difficult and densely packed. The essay of less than 60 pages required concentration and several readings to understand. The lecture surely challenged the attention of those who were fortunate enough to hear it live.

The lecture says a great deal in a deceptively small space. The title summarizes the content aptly as McDowell expands upon "perception", "capacity" and "knowledge" and their interrelationships. It is an essay on epistemology and more.

Put simply, the lecture discusses the veridicality of perception. To what extent is perception a source of knowledge given the notorious fact that perceptions, even of the simplest kind, frequently are unreliable? This problem has challenged philosophers since at least the time of Plato and his dialogue the "Theaetetus".

McDowell begins by considering and expanding the views of Willfred Sellars, a famous predecessor at the University of Pittsburgh. McDowell takes as his text on the nature of knowledge the following difficult passage from Sellars:

"In characterizing an episode or a state as that of knowing, we are not giving an empirical description of that episode or state; we are placing it in the logical space of reasons of justifying and being able to justify what one says."

McDowell wants to defend the reliability of perception as a "capacity" for knowledge. When we see something green, for example, we are entitled to conclude that we are looking at something green when we see the object under ordinary conditions, and under certain other fairly ordinary qualifications. McDowell wants to argue that we have a rational reason based on self-awareness and reflection for concluding that something is green when we see it as green.

Many philosophers argue that perceptions are unreliable because, say, we can be mistaken that something is green when it so appears to us. They reject reflectiveness as a warrant for greeness for a variety of reasons which McDowell explores. Epistemological problems of either dogmatism or skepticism are the result.

McDowells' response is to distinguish individual perceptions, which may be nonveridical, from the capacity for perception. He argues that humans have the capacity for veridical perceptions and for understanding that they have this capacity even while individual instances of perception may be nonveridical. Perception is a source of knowledge then, and may be justifiably relied upon as a "capacity" even though it may be wrong in particular instances. Thus McDowell brings to bear another important teaching of contemporary philosophy summarized in the word, "fallibilism."

McDowell advances his arguments in a sustained fashion, carefully and precisely. He draws some broad conclusions from his epistemology tying it in with classical philosophical thought. He wants to make sense of the ancient idea that "mature human beings are rational animals" McDowell concludes: Perception as an operation of rationality is our distinctive species of something that is generically animal."

I enjoyed learning something of McDowell through this difficult essay in sustained philosophic thought. I also enjoyed remembering my days as an undergraduate in philosophy in Milwaukee, when I attended an Aquinas lecture when I was young.

Robin Friedman

[Aaron]

This isn't so much a book as an essay printed in a lovely, tiny hardcover. It probably works out to about the same length as the 20-page essays from Mind, Value, and Reality, so keep that in mind if you're thinking of buying it. That said, it is an essay very much worth reading, if you're interested in McDowell's philosophy. McDowell expands ideas explored elsewhere in his work (especially in Mind and World) about how perceptual states can ground knowledge. I find especially brilliant the distinction between skepticism and fallibilism, but it took me a long time to really get a grasp on it, and I don't think I properly could have if I weren't already fairly familiar with McDowell's philosophy. This essay is to an extent comprehensible on its own, but to really grasp it you need a good understanding of the way McDowell uses the distinction between the realm of law and the space of reasons. Otherwise, certain of his moves (e.g. his move toward the end when he tries to show why his position doesn't require making very strange and surely false empirical claims about perception) will seem insufficient or at best opaque.

[Chant · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you read reviews for the purpose of deciding on whether or not you should purchase the item? In this case, I would say "no" but not because of the content of the "book" but rather the length. McDowell's Perception as a Capacity for Knowledge is the 2011 Aquinas lecture series, which for whatever reason, thought it would be good to publish a very small lecture into a hardcover book, but who am I? I am not part of any university book press or anything (I do work at a university but not in this capacity).

If anything, if you have access to a university library (online/physical) you should take it out because it is a fairly quick read-through.

Considering the contents of this lecture, however? It is classic 'McDowell' fair, which is to say his very unique writing/speaking style is very much present here, so if you've read portions of Mind and World and were put off by the way he phrased things such n such way, you will be disappointed that it is very much present in this small hardcover (did I mention that the book is tiny?).

McDowell's thoughts on perceptual knowledge are more or less what is presented in Mind and World but I do appreciate his usage of his intellectual hero, Wilfrid Sellars, Myth of the Given to poke holes in other analytic philosophers' opinions/thoughts/thesis/whatever on perceptional knowledge and the justification for having the capacity to have true and honest knowledge.

I take a fairly ordinary/naive or pragmatic stance on perception and knowledge. Do I see a cat on the damn mat? Well I just petted the little guy and it appeared to my perceptual senses as such, so I think I am justified in believing such "perceptual knowledge".

Not bad but not particularly great. Just read Mind and World.

[Marco · Rating 5 out of 5]

John McDowell's Aquinas lectures contain various reminders aimed to dissolve philosophical confusions in the philosophy of perception, of mind and of epistemology. He is interested in calling attention to a certain blind spot: "When all goes well in the operation of a rational perceptual capacity, a subject is in a perceptual state that makes a feature of her environment present to her and so provides conclusive warrant for the corresponding belief." (p. 53)

Assembling such reminders is meant to move us towards being able to appreciate"helpful lessons about the epistemology of perceptual knowledge"(p. 27) and it is in particular Tyler Burge who shows up as someone in need for philosophical therapy. Burge's supposed philosophical error hinges "on the assumption that the warrant a perceptual state provides for a belief cannot guarantee the truth of the belief" (p. 30) and hence McDowell aims to demonstrate that we are not forced into accepting this assumption. Rather, than accepting said assumption, he urges us to consider that perceptual states can indeed provide an indefeasible warrant for one's belief of how things are. "[W]hen all goes well in the operation of a perceptual capacity of a sort that belongs to its possessor’s rationality, Perception as a Capacity for Knowledge a perceiver enjoys a perceptual state in which some feature of her environment is there for her, perceptually present to her rationally self-conscious awareness" and hence "[i]f a perceptual state makes a feature of the environment present to a perceiver’s rationally self-conscious awareness, there is no possibility, compatibly with someone’s being in that state, that things are not as the state would warrant her in believing that they are, in a belief that would simply register the presence of that feature of the environment. The warrant for belief that the state provides is indefeasible; it cannot be undermined."(p. 30f.)

Even though our capacity of perception may be fallible in general it simply does not follow that some perceptual states do not provide an indefeasible warrant for a perceptual belief that things are thus and so when all goes well.

Moreover, McDowell rejects the charge of excessive intellectualism: "There is no excessive intellectualism in a conception of a capacity in whose exercise a subject acquires knowledge that is grounded, and known by her to be grounded, in the perceptual presence to her of objective states of affairs. An ordinary adult human being might not put it in those terms, but that is what she would mean if she said something like “I can tell a green thing when I see one”." (p. 32)

Personally, I find McDowell's approach to be deeply convincing. It can acknowledge our fallibility while simultaneously holding fast to the possibility of making cognitive contact with the world and hence it can easily show how global scepticism is ruled out and how knowledge is possible. It is not overly intellectualistic as a construal of the relation between perception and knowledge and it can hold its own against challenges in contemporary epistemology. It is not hard to see the influence of McDowell on thinkers like Andrea Kern and Sebastian Rödl in these lectures. Nobody interested in philosophical questions about perception and epistemology should afford herself the leniancy of missing out on these lectures.