McDowell’s main target is a deep misunderstanding which affects epistemology. It is thinking about knowledge under the distorting effects of the argument from illusion. That argument starts from the thought that experience can either be truthful (or veridical) or illusory. I can experience a dagger before me when there is one there (a veridical case) or – like Macbeth – I can have an experience as of a dagger when there isn’t one there: it is merely an illusion.
So far, so trivial and innocent. But the next step considers the fact that the two experiences are indistinguishable for the subject. If that is so, all that one ever really experiences is what is common between the truthful and illusory case. That is, experience only ever takes in what is common. That is: how things appear to be (in both these cases: there appears to be a dagger) not how they are. The experience itself cannot take in how things are precisely because, as far as the subject is concerned, the experience of a real dagger and a mere illusion is qualitatively identical.
To recap: the argument from illusion starts from the fact that veridical and illusory experience seems the same to the subject and concludes that all anyone ever really experiences is how things look, not how they are.
Given this conclusion about experience, there is a further bad consequence for epistemology. If things turn out actually to be how they appear to be, that is something that is external to the subject. It depends on what McDowell calls a ‘favour from the world’. We might say, it depends on a matter of luck about how things turn out beyond or outside the experience of the subject. After all, as far as the actual experience goes, the experience of a real dagger and an illusion is just the same.
McDowell suggests that epistemologists having argued so far conclude that as far as the subjects reasons or rationality go, the starting point for thinking about knowledge is the content of experience as given by the argument from illusion: merely how things seem, not how they are. The challenge they then face is to see how knowledge of how things are (rather than just how they appear) is then, ever, possible.
The starting point for this project is a conception of what is available to the subject whether or not they are lucky, whether or not the world is kind. McDowell calls this assumption an ‘interiorized’ view of justification
McDowell considers five responses.
1. Reject the interiorized view of justification. This is what McDowell recommends.
2. Accept scepticism. This seems hard to resist given the starting point. If all that experience ever gives us is how things appear, not how they are, it seems impossible to gain knowledge of how the world is. It will depend on mere luck. In effect, the argument from illusion is just the sceptical ringer argument again.
3. Assume there must be ways of arguing from appearances to how things are that are risk free. This is frankly impossible given the starting point.
4. Take knowledge to be a composite of an internalist version of justification (something the subject can ensure) plus a worldly favour. This is what nearly everyone tries to do.
5. Externalist reliabilism: so knowledge has nothing to do with reasons. ‘it is at most a matter of superficial idiom that we do not attribute knowledge to properly functioning thermometers’ [McDowell 1995: 882]. McDowell does not really argue against this position. He assumes that to have knowledge is something to do with having reasons. But his argument against position 4 may count against this position.
Two arguments against a composite of an internalist version of justification plus external worldly favour.
Argument 1:
Placing truth and reason on different sides of the divide between the internal and external rules out the role that reason is surely supposed to play: ensuring the reliability of methods of arriving at beliefs.
The judgement that a method really is reliable, and does not just appear to be so, is one whose correctness depends on a favour from the world.
Thus it cannot be established by reason if that is restricted to areas where no such favours are required.
Argument 2:
The division undermines the idea that knowledge is not merely accidentally true belief.
On the hybrid conception, the justificatory condition can be met whether or not a belief turns out to be true. Its truth depends on a favour of the world which in turn seems a mere accidental addition to possession of an internally constituted justification.
‘how can the unconnected obtaining of the fact have any intelligible bearing on an epistemic position that the person’s standing in the space of reasons is supposed to help constitute?’ [McDowell 1995: 884].
What is the alternative?
Throughout the term, I have suggested that knowledge is undermined by luck. A subject can have a true belief but we withhold calling it knowledge if it depends on luck. A friend tells you the prime minister has resigned. You believe them and thus this. But a) the friend was only joking and has not heard any news but b) by chance, the prime minister has just resigned. So your belief is true. Still you don’t know the prime minister has resigned. It is just luck that you believe that when it is true.
McDowell uses this sort of objection to criticise the hybrid picture of perceptual knowledge based on experience. If all that experience gives you is access to mere appearances, not how things are, then whether things are as they appear is mere luck. If so ‘how can the unconnected obtaining of the fact have any intelligible bearing on an epistemic position that the person’s standing in the space of reasons is supposed to help constitute?’.
His positive account attempts to escape this objection. But the fact is that sometimes appearances can be misleading. That they are not is not wholly within our control. So there will be no avoiding luck altogether. However, it reappears in his account in a blander way.
First key move: deny the argument from illusion. Recall experience of the dagger and experience of the illusion of the dagger. Just because they seem the same does not imply that experience is the highest common factor of these. No. In the first case, what one experiences is the dagger. The dagger is part of what one experiences. The experience is a relational state, taking in the dagger. In the illusion, there is mere appearance. So experience is either of the dagger or a mere appearance. It is not always mere appearance.
If this disjunctive account is right, then the state of the world is not in general external to the subject. In experience, we, generally, take in how things are. So the state of the world is not ‘blankly’ external to the subject. (Of course, the world is still independent of us. It does not depend on us. But the point of experience is to make the world available to us.)
Second key move: generalise this. In general, the justification one has for a belief (whether or not a perceptual belief; think of knowledge by testimony etc) is not wholly within one’s own control. I can be justified in knowing where the station is by asking a reliable native and hearing her say where it is. Her telling me justifies my belief and thus I have knowledge even if the fact that she is a reliable informant is not wholly within my control.
But isn’t this simply a matter of luck again? If I cannot ensure that the person is reliable, isn’t it just luck whether they are or not. I think that this ignores the idea that the justification doesn’t have to be up to the subject. Imagine a third party explaining how a subject found out where the station is. The account they are able to give removes the idea that there was any knowledge-undermining luck involved. The subject asked someone who knew where the station was in a culture where, when asked, we tell the truth. That is a reliable transmission of knowledge. To be in that position may have taken luck, but in that position, no further luck is needed to acquire knowledge.