Phenomenal Conservatism and Self-Defeat

Here, I defend the self-defeat argument for Phenomenal Conservatism from objections due to John DePoe.*

[* Based on: “Phenomenal Conservatism and Self-Defeat: A Reply to DePoe,” Philosophical Studies 156 (2011): 1-13. Responding to John DePoe’s “Defeating the Self-defeat Argument for Phenomenal Conservativism”, Philosophical Studies (2010). ]

1. The Self-Defeat Argument

Phenomenal Conservatism (PC) says that if it seems to you that P, then, in the absence of defeaters, this gives you some justification for believing P.

The self-defeat argument for PC is something like this:

1. All our beliefs (of the sort that are plausible candidates for being justified) are based on appearances.

2. A belief is justified only if it is based on an adequate source of justification.

3. If ~PC, then appearances are not an adequate source of justification.

4. So if ~PC, then all our beliefs are unjustified, including the belief that ~PC.

5. So it is self-defeating to deny PC.

2. Acquaintance Without Appearance?

The Acquaintance Theory

The Acquaintance Theory holds, roughly, that a belief gets to be justified by acquaintance with the fact that makes it true, rather than by mere appearance. Acquaintance is a kind of direct contact with an object, such that it’s impossible for the object not to be real. Acquaintance theorists usually say that we are “acquainted” with our own conscious mental states and perhaps some abstract objects, but not with external, physical objects.

An objection to PC

DePoe rejects (1) in the self-defeat argument; he says that our beliefs are based on acquaintance, rather than appearance.

He asks us to imagine a case in which a person is in pain and is directly acquainted with that pain, yet they do not have an appearance of pain. He invites us to agree that in such a case, the person would be justified in believing they were in pain, which shows that the source of justification is acquaintance, rather than appearance.

I found this scenario very obscure on its face. An “appearance” of pain is just a state of seeming to be in pain. So: What would it mean to be acquainted with your pain and yet not seem to yourself to be in pain? DePoe didn’t explain.

The separate-states argument

Perhaps he had in mind an argument like this: An appearance of pain is an intentional mental state that represents pain. This is a distinct state from the pain. Therefore, it must be possible for the one state to exist without the other.

But this is a poor argument. There may be a necessary condition between the pain and the state representing the pain. Or they may in fact be the same state. Pain may be a self-presenting state, i.e., being in pain is also seeming to be in pain. This explains why it seems impossible to be in excruciating agony and yet not seem to be in pain at all.

Btw, try imagining the reverse scenario: You’re in extreme pain, and you appear to yourself to be in extreme pain, but you aren’t acquainted with that pain. This makes as much sense as the original scenario. I have no idea what this is supposed to be like, and no idea whether a person would have justification for believing they were in pain.

Borderline pains

Here is an attempt to imagine the scenario. There is a continuum of sensations, from S1 (which is a mildly warm sensation) to S1000 (which is an excruciating burning sensation). For each n, S(n+1) is just slightly warmer than Sn, so slightly that you wouldn’t even notice the difference.

S1 is pleasant, yet S1000 is painful. So there must be a first sensation in the series that counted as “pain”. But it is plausible that you would not know what sensation that was. Say it is S500. S499 is indistinguishable to you from S500. So you couldn’t tell that S500 was the cutoff, rather than S499 or S501.

So perhaps this could happen: You’re at S500. You’re acquainted with that sensation, and the sensation counts as pain (the first pain in the series). However it doesn’t seem to you that you’re in pain; rather, you’re simply unsure whether you’re in pain or not.

So that’s a possible case in which you have acquaintance with pain but not an appearance that you’re in pain. But it seems clear to me that in this case, the person is not justified in believing they are in pain. So that supports PC over the acquaintance theory.

Unnoticed states

Perhaps it is possible to have a mild pain that you fail to notice, say, because you are distracted by something more interesting. Perhaps this would count as being acquainted with the pain but not seeming to be in pain? I don’t know. But if so, I think this again supports PC. If the person does not notice the pain at all, then he wouldn’t believe, and wouldn’t be justified in believing, that he was in pain.

A similar case: while proofreading your blog post, your eyes pass over three typos, but you fail to notice that they are typos. Perhaps it could be said that you saw the typos but it did not seem to you that there were typos there. Again, you would not be justified in believing that there were three typos.

Introspective error

Maybe we sometimes make introspective mistakes. I got this example from Paul Churchland: a subject is primed to expect a painful, hot sensation on his back. But instead, you touch the person briefly with an ice cube. Maybe the subject would incorrectly think that he had a hot sensation, even though it was a cold sensation.

I don’t know, but let’s suppose this is right. In that case, we might say that the subject was acquainted with a cold sensation (since that was the only sensation that existed), but it seemed to the subject that it was a hot sensation.

In this case, it seems to me that the subject would be justified in thinking that he had a hot sensation. So this again supports PC over the acquaintance theory.

3. The Case of Clairvoyance

This example comes from Laurence BonJour:

Norman has a reliable faculty of clairvoyance. However, he has never actually checked on it, so he has no independent verification of its reliability. One day, it just seems to him that the President is in New York. Call this proposition “P”. This seeming was produced by his clairvoyant faculty.

Some people say that Norman’s belief is completely unjustified, because he has no evidence that clairvoyance is reliable. Some say that this provides a counter-example to PC.

My take: Notice first that any normal person in the real world would have defeaters for clairvoyant beliefs. E.g., the fact that most people think clairvoyance doesn’t exist, that there have hitherto been no confirmed cases of it, that modern science can explain how our other faculties work but not how clairvoyance would work.

For Norman to have justification for believing P, he would have to somehow not have any of these defeaters. So assume that. Maybe he doesn’t know about modern science, he hasn’t talked to any other people, and it has never occurred to him to question his clairvoyance.

In this case, it just seems to me that Norman does have some justification for believing P. If you think that’s not true, then I don’t know why anything at all would be justified. I don’t know how Norman’s relying on his clairvoyance is supposed to be any different from your relying on your senses. (Norman just happens to have a different sense that you lack.) Norman hasn’t proved that clairvoyance is reliable, but ordinary people also haven’t proved that their memory is reliable, or their vision, hearing, taste, touch, smell, or reasoning. So if Norman is being irrational, then everyone is being irrational (except perhaps for a few philosophers who finally constructed an argument for the reliability of their cognitive faculties?).

I assume we don’t want to say that, so we should accept that Norman has justification. So there remains no obstacle to accepting PC.