A Disjunctivist in Barn Façade County
Towards a Non-Disjunctive Account of Perceptual Appearance
Without a Highest Common Factor
In this paper we argue that McDowellian epistemological disjunctivism, according to
which the concept of appearance is essentially disjunctive, i.e. its content is fully exhausted by
the disjunction, is faced with a dilemma that arises from considering Goldman-style Barn
Façade County-scenarios. These confront the disjunctivist with the question of how many and
which disjuncts fall under the concept of an appearance. We shall argue, first, that the
McDowellian disjunctivist will either have to give up the claim that the concept of
appearances is essentially disjunctive, or allow for completely arbitrary collections of
disjuncts. And we shall argue, second, that the central philosophical goals that motivated
epistemological disjunctivism in the first place can be achieved quite independently of an
essentially disjunctive account of appearance. These goals we take to be twofold: avoidance
of a highest common factor conception of appearance (and thus blocking the argument from
illusion) on the one hand and granting primacy to factive concepts such as seeing or
perceiving over non-factive concepts such as “being appeared to” (and thus opening the way
to defend direct realism about perception).
I. McDowell's Epistemological Disjunctivism
Disjunctivism in the philosophy of perception is basically a thesis about concepts such
as appearance,1 sense impression or perceptual experience etc., as they feature in traditional
1
Note that the term appearance can be used in either of two ways: One can speak of “appearances that (or “as
if”) p” (sometimes being called epistemic appearances) and of “things appearing F” (phenomenal
1
epistemology and philosophy of mind. The introduction of these concepts is typically
motivated by some version of the argument from illusion: Since, undeniably, perceptually
deceiving situations and genuine perceptions may sometimes be indistinguishable from the
perceiver’s point of view, it is concluded that there must be a type of mental state that is
common to both perceptions and perceptual illusions, hallucinations and the like. Terms such
as “appearance” are then introduced to capture this type of mental states. Typically,
appearances are thought of as phenomenal states with representational content. Veridical
perceptions will then have to be understood as composites: They consist of an appearance
plus a suitable state of the world that makes the appearance a veridical one. We will call this
the “conjunctivist” conception of perception. Illusions, hallucinations etc., by contrast, may be
regarded as “mere” appearances insofar as there is nothing in the world that corresponds in a
suitable manner to their representational content for them to be veridical. Appearances would
thus turn out to be what John McDowell has called “the highest common factor” between
mere appearances and veridical perceptions. On this Highest Common Factor (HCF) model
everything that is immediately accessible to me in a veridical perception could be just the
same in a case of hallucination. Hence, the worry arises how, on the HCF model, perceptions
can be genuinely world-involving episodes. It seems that our perceptual access to the world
could be indirect at best. If it is granted, plausibly enough, that we can have no indirect access
to the world without having some kind of direct access to it, and that there is no better
candidate for a direct access to the world than perception, it seems to follow that on the HCF
model, we can have no access to the world at all.2
2
appearances). Since we are exclusively concerned with the epistemology of perception, we will restrict
ourselves to the first notion, which is what McDowell does in his writings, too.
There are various ways in which a defender of a HCF model might respond to this worry (cf. eg. Burge 2005,
Crane 2001, pp. 137ff.; Smith 2002, esp. ch. 9). For the purposes of this paper, however, we will not consider
these responses but start from the assumption that the HCF model is unsatisfactory as an account of genuine
perception.
2
In order to avoid this epistemological conundrum, disjunctivism rejects the idea that
the different episodes that fall under the concept of an appearance must all belong to the same
kind of mental state. Rather, the concept of appearance has a disjunctive structure and covers
two radically different kinds of episodes: veridical (world-involving) perceptions on the one
hand, and illusions or hallucinations, on the other.3
It has to be noted that there are several variants of disjunctivism in the current
literature. The first one, prominently defended by Paul Snowdon and Michael Martin, has its
home primarily in the philosophy of mind and is concerned with the question of what the
immediate objects of perception are.4 The “appearances” to be analysed disjunctively are
described (in the visual case) as situations in which “it looks to S as if there is an F”
(Snowdon 1988, p. 202). We will not be concerned with this variant of disjunctivism in this
paper. The other variant is the epistemological disjunctivism developed by John McDowell.5 It
is phrased in terms of fact perception, rather than object perception. Its central claim can be
put as follows (cf. McDowell 1998, pp. 386-7):
ED1
(a)If S has an appearance that p then
(b)the fact that p makes itself perceptually manifest to S (“good case”) or
3
4
5
Note that some authors regard illusions – which in an important sense may well be world-involving episodes
– as belonging to the good-case disjunct. See, e.g., Byrne and Logue 2008 p. 60 for some discussion. Since
we are primarily interested in McDowellian epistemological disjunctivism (see below), we will follow
McDowell in placing illusions with hallucinations in the “bad” disjunct.
In the more recent literature, the term metaphysical disjunctivism has been established for this variant. This
captures the thought that the core disjunctivist thesis is one about the nature of perceptual experiences.
However, some philosophers propose a further differentiation: In the introduction to Haddock and
Macphershon 2008 the authors distinguish between experiential disjunctivism (e.g. Paul Snowdon), which
focuses on the nature of experiences, and phenomenal disjunctivism (e.g. Mike Martin), which primarily
seeks to explain the phenomenal character of experiences.
Variants of epistemological disjunctivism have also been defended by Bill Brewer (2008) and Sonia Sedivy
(2008).
3
(c)it merely appears to S that p (“bad case”).6
With this analysis of the concept of appearance in place, the argument from illusion
and the resulting HCF model with its “conjunctive” conception of perception can be resisted:
The fact that “having an appearance that p” may in some cases amount to suffering from
hallucination is entirely compatible with “having an appearance that p” being in other
circumstances a genuinely world-involving perceptual episode with no “highest common
factor” intervening between us and the perceived world.
II. Essentially Disjunctive Concepts
Now it will not do for an epistemological disjunctivist to claim that the concept of
appearance can be analyzed disjunctively, since this much may readily be granted by the
proponent of a conjunctive account of perception, too. In fact, ED1, as it stands, is just a
truism that any serious account of perception should be able to accept. Rather, the
disjunctivist must claim that the relevant concept of an appearance is essentially disjunctive in
the sense that there is no deeper conceptual unity that links the disjuncts and accounts for their
falling under the concept of an appearance. Otherwise, this deeper unity could be seen as
constituting a common element in both perceptions and mere appearances, thus reintroducing
the very HCF model disjunctivism was meant to overcome.
For clarification consider the concept of noble gases. It certainly is true that, if
something is a (non-artificial) noble gas, it is either Helium, Neon, Argon, Krypton, Xenon, or
Radon. If that was all that could be said about noble gases as such, then the concept would be
6
This is our rendering of McDowell's formulation “an appearance that such-and-such is the case can be either
a mere appearance or the fact that such-and-such is the case making itself perceptually manifest to someone”
(pp. 386-7). Some disjunctivists give their disjunctive analyses the form of a biconditional (e.g. Paul
Snowdon 1988). However, we need not commit ourselves to the claim that everything that is a perception is
also an appearance.
4
essentially disjunctive. There would be nothing they all have in common in virtue of which
they belong to the same group of chemical elements. In fact, however, noble gases belong to
the same group within the periodic table of elements due to the fact that they all are
chemically inert gases which in turn is accounted for by the fact that their outermost electron
shell is “full” and therefore cannot take up further electrons. Hence, the concept of noble
gases is not essentially disjunctive.
An epistemological disjunctivist, by contrast, considers the concept of appearance to
be essentially disjunctive. Something is an appearance not in virtue of its satisfying a set of
independently specifiable necessary and sufficient conditions (comparable to “having a full
outermost electron shell” in the case of noble gases), but rather in virtue of its being either a
perception or a mere appearance. A disjunctivism that allows that there are non-disjunctive
necessary and sufficient conditions for something’s being an appearance (conditions that must
be satisfied by perceptions and mere appearances alike for them to count as appearances)
would be compatible with a HCF model, since satisfaction of the necessary and sufficient
conditions could then be regarded as the “highest common factor” in perceptions and mere
appearances. For this reason, in what follows we will consider only “essentially” disjunctive
theories as forms of epistemological disjunctivism. In fact, McDowell, too, speaks of his
alternative to the HCF model as “the essentially disjunctive conception of appearances”
(McDowell 1998, p. 389).
It is important to see, however, that essential disjunctivism does not imply that there is
nothing that perceptions and mere appearances have in common. Tyler Burge, for instance,
objects to McDowellian disjunctivism that it is incompatible with the empirical fact that the
causal processes in the sense organs and the brain that give rise to an illusion will typically be
5
of the same kind as the processes that give rise to a perception with the same content. But the
essential disjunctivist need not deny this. It may well be the case that there are causally
sufficient (and perhaps even causally necessary) conditions that are the same for perceptions
and mere appearances of the same content. But, the essential disjunctivist insists, these
conditions are not what accounts for their both being appearances with that content.
Appearance, in the relevant sense, is an epistemological category. As noted above, its
introduction is motivated by some version of the argument from illusion. It is an
epistemological concept that is meant to account for situations such as this: I would take
myself to see a bent stick, if it were not for the fact that I know that sometimes sticks that look
bent really are straight, so that I prefer to characterize my epistemic standing with respect to
what I see by saying that at least it appears to me that there is a bent stick. Thus, the concept
of an appearance, in the relevant sense, gets its content from the epistemological role it is
supposed to play, namely that of a non-factive concept that covers both perceptions and mere
appearances and thus allows us to register the epistemological import of the fact that there are
situations in which, from the subject’s point of view, both may be indistinguishable. Now the
point of essential disjunctivism is that there are no necessary and sufficient conditions for
having a appearance in this sense that can be specified non-disjunctively, i.e. no conditions
that can be satisfied by perceptions and mere appearances independently of each other and
that could function as a “highest common factor”.
Essential disjunctivism is a thesis about relations of conceptual dependence between
epistemological concepts for mental states such as perceiving, being under an illusion,
hallucinating, and the like. If we assume for the purposes of the argument that epistemological
concepts, qua normative, cannot be reduced to physiological or causal ones7, then essential
7
We cannot argue for this assumption here; arguments for this kind of view can be found, for instance, in
Sellars 1956, Davidson 1970, and McDowell 1994.
6
disjunctivism does not have to deny that there may be causally necessary and sufficient
conditions for perceptions and mere appearances alike (for instance a particular type of brain
state that occurs whenever someone either sees or has an appearance of a bent stick).
However, these conditions cannot account for the fact that the person in question falls under
the epistemological concept of having an appearance that there is a bent stick. Adapting a
famous line of Sellars’, we can say that in characterizing an episode or a state as an
appearance, “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”
(Sellars 1956, § 36). (Sellars, of course, speaks of knowledge. Our point is that the
epistemological concept of an appearance belongs to the logical space of reasons just as much
as the concept of knowledge.)
III. Three Distinctions
To structure the issue of epistemological theories of perception, the following three
crucial distinctions will prove helpful:
i. (a) Disjunctive versus (b) non-disjunctive account of appearance
Disjunctive accounts of appearances (in the strict sense just introduced) claim that,
from an epistemological point of view, there is nothing more to be said about appearances as
such than that they are either perceptions or mere appearances, whereas a non-disjunctive
account allows for an independent characterization of the concept prior to mentioning the
kinds of entities that fall under it.
ii. (a) Conjunctive versus (b) non-conjunctive accounts of perception
7
We call an account of perception conjunctive whenever it posits an epistemologically
relevant HCF shared by perceptions and mere appearances. In this case, every veridical
perception will consist in an “inner” mental state (the occurrence of which would be
compatible with the perceptual state not being veridical) plus an appropriate fact in the
“outer” reality. In a non-conjunctive account, such as McDowell's, there is no type of mental
state that could ground or justify a perceptual belief and that could be present both in veridical
perceptions and mere appearances alike. (Note that the disjunctive/non-disjunctive distinction
applies to accounts of appearances, whereas the conjunctive/non-conjunctive distinction
applies to accounts of perception.)
iii. (a) primacy of factive mental-state concepts versus (b) primacy of non-factive
mental-state concepts
The concept of perception is a factive mental-state concept insofar as from “S
perceives that p” it follows that p.8 Slightly deviating from common usage, we will consider
the concept of a mere appearance as factive, too, insofar as “It merely appears to S that p”
implies that non-p.9 In this sense, a mental-state concept is non-factive just in case it is
neutral with respect to that state’s being veridical or not (neither implies the one nor the
other). An example would be the concept of an appearance (in contrast to that of a mere
appearance), since “It appears to S that p” implies neither that p nor that non-p. Theories of
perception that explain perception in terms of appearance and thus give primacy to nonfactive mental-state concepts may be contrasted with theories that reverse this order of
8
9
On this use of “factive”, cf. Williamson 2000 (p. 7, p. 21).
Against this, it might be objected that there are cases of mere appearances that in fact are veridical, for
instance so-called veridical hallucinations. In such a case, the subject hallucinates that p while p happens to
be the case. A reason to call this a “mere appearance” would be that although things appear to the subject to
be just as they really are, this appearance does not convey knowledge. On the other hand, it seems misleading
to say that it merely appeared to the subject that p, since p really is the case. Ordinary usage seems to be
ambivalent in this respect. For the purposes of this paper, we treat “mere appearance” as factive, without
wanting to deny that there may be a legitimate sense in which veridical hallucinations count as mere
appearances, too.
8
explanation. Disjunctivism is an example of the latter kind: factive concepts such as the
concept of perception are used to explain non-factive ones such as that of an appearance.10
Epistemological disjunctivism may now be characterized as a combination of i(a)
disjunctivism concerning perceptual appearances, ii(b) non-conjunctivism about perception,
and iii(a) primacy of factive mental-state concepts.
IV. McDowell in Barn Façade County
We shall now present a problem for epistemological disjunctivism that arises from
considering cases such as Alvin Goldman’s Barn-Façade County (BFC) scenario (Goldman
1976): Henry, driving along the highway, looks at the only real barn in a county where,
unbeknownst to Henry, there are many barn-façades that look exactly like barns when viewed
from the highway. In this scenario Henry is not in a position to know that there is a barn over
there. This poses the following problem for ED1: Henry has the appearance that there is a
barn over there (i), which means that an instance of the antecedent of ED1 is true. But neither
is it the case that (ii) the fact that there is a barn over there is making itself manifest to Henry
(since otherwise, he would be in a position to know that there is a barn over there) nor (iii) is
Henry confronted with a mere appearance of there being a barn over there (since what he sees
is a real barn). How can the epistemological disjunctivist react to this?
(1) It doesn't appear to Henry that there is a barn
The first possibility we want to investigate is to deny that BFC cases are instances of
the antecedent of ED1, that is, to deny that Henry is in a situation where it appears to him that
there is a barn over there at all. Although this does not seem to be a very promising line to
10
As has often been argued, linguistic and phenomenological reasons speak in favor of this explanatory order;
cf. Sellars 1956, Austin 1962, Strawson 1979, Child 1992.
9
take, one might argue for it in the following way: If you cannot tell As from Bs perceptually,
you are not entitled to call your appearance “an appearance that there is an A”. If for example,
you know a pair of twins, Joe and Jim, whom you cannot tell apart by sight, it is far from
clear why you should classify a situation of seeing one of them as an “appearance that this is
Joe”. Rather, one should classify it as an “appearance that this is either Joe or Jim” (or “one of
the twins”). Something analogous holds, one might say, in BFC. Since Henry cannot tell
barns from barn-façades, his appearance is not one to the effect that there is a barn over there,
but rather one to the effect that either there is a barn or a barn-façade over there.
But in fact, the analogy between BFC and the case of seeing either Joe or Jim does not
hold. In the case of BFC, there exists a significant asymmetry between barns and barnfacades, the latter being simulacra of the former. Whereas barn-facades look like barns, the
reverse does not hold. In order to look like a barn-façade, the fake character of the thing must
itself be visually apparent, which obviously is not the case with real barns. Contrast the twins:
If Joe looks like Jim, Jim also looks like Joe. It is the asymmetry between barns and barnfacades that explains why the perception of either of them counts as an appearance that there
is a barn. Since the barn Henry is looking at is looking like a barn, and not like a barn-façade,
Henry is not having an appearance of either a barn or a barn-façade, but simply the
appearance of a barn. Hence, it does not seem viable for the disjunctivist to deny that the
antecedent of ED1 is true.
(2) The fact that there is a barn is manifest to Henry
Another route to take for a proponent of ED1 could be to hold that Henry’s situation
may be classified as a “good case” and thus as a case of ED1 (b) where a fact makes itself
manifest to a perceiver. One way to argue for this would be by claiming that knowledge is
10
accessible in BFC-situations. However, since almost everyone agrees that in BFC Henry
doesn’t know that there is a barn in front of him, there does not seem to be much prospect in
this option. Alternatively, one might argue that facts can be perceptually manifest to someone
without thereby making knowledge accessible. Note, first, that McDowell (1998) himself
excludes this: “One could hardly countenance of the idea of having a fact made manifest
within the reach of one's experience, without supposing that that would make knowledge of
that fact available to one.” (p. 390) With respect to BFC-like scenarios, he claims that one
“counts as experiencing the fact making itself manifest only in the exercise of a capacity –
which is of course fallible – to to tell how things are” (p. 390 fn. 37). Since in BFC-scenarios
the subject cannot tell whether there is a barn in front of her merely by looking at it from the
road, she is not able to “tell how things are” and hence does not have knowledge of the fact in
question (that there is a barn over there) available to her. Thus, it is not open to McDowell to
claim that BFC-cases fall under the first disjunct of ED1.
However, perhaps it is possible for the epistemological disjunctivist (against
McDowell) to formulate the first disjunct in such a way as to avoid a necessary connection
with the availability of knowledge. This might allow her to classify BFC-scenarios as “good
cases” after all. She could, for example, formulate (b) in terms of being perceptually
confronted with a fact. Seeing a barn under normal conditions and seeing the only real barn in
BFC are cases which can both quite plausibly be characterized as confrontations with the fact
that there is a barn over there. In one of them the subject can take advantage of this
confrontation and acquire knowledge, but not in the other.11
11
We owe this suggestion to Mike Martin. Against this suggestion, it might be objected that it ignores the
obvious fact that subjects have quite different conceptual capacities at their disposal, so that it may well occur
that somebody is perceptually confronted with the fact that p, but it doesn’t appear to her that p – for example
because she lacks the conceptual or perceptual capacities to recognize facts of that sort. When I see a
mushroom that is a paradigm case of a yellow boletus, the suggestion under consideration would imply that I
am perceptually confronted with the fact that it is a yellow boletus, even if I am completely ignorant of
mushrooms and do not know what a yellow boletus is. But then it would be false to say that it appears to me
11
However, the epistemological disjunctivist has some reason to avoid accommodating
BFC-cases by reformulating the “good cases” in terms of being perceptually confronted with
facts. Now although what is accessible to the subject in the “good case” does not fall short of
the fact in so far as it is a confrontation with that very fact, this still is compatible with the
subject's not having knowledge of that fact available to her. So being, epistemically speaking,
in the best possible case would still not be good enough for knowledge. This is a result the
epistemological disjunctivist certainly wants to avoid since it would reopen the door for a
version of the argument from illusion.12
(3) Henry has a mere appearance of a barn
One might, finally, try to argue that in BFC-cases the appearance that there is a barn
over there counts as a mere appearance of there being a barn and thus falls under the second
disjunct. The reason to reject this suggestion is obvious. Mere appearances – as opposed to
appearances – are factive in the sense introduced above. If it merely appears to S that p, this
implies that non-p. By contrast, in BFC it appears to Henry that there is a barn, and really
there is a barn. Hence, Henry does not have a mere appearance that there is a barn.
Against this, it might be held that there are cases of mere appearances that p that are
compatible with p, namely veridical hallucinations. Imagine I am in a room where there is a
sound of very high pitch that, due to hardness of hearing, I cannot hear. As it happens, I
hallucinate a sound qualitatively identical to the sound in the room. In this case, one might
12
that there is a yellow boletus before me. – However, this is no problem for epistemological disjunctivism as
we have introduced it, since ED1 is not a biconditional and hence does not imply that everything that falls
under one of the disjuncts is an appearance, but only the converse. So this objection doesn't seem to have an
impact on the present proposal.
One way to avoid this might be a disjunctive analysis of “being confronted with a fact”. In effect, this would
amount to a “trisjunctive” analysis of appearance, a possibility to which we will return in a minute.
12
hold that although there really is a sound just as I hallucinate, it still is the case that it merely
appears to me that there is such a sound. Similarly, in BFC-cases the veridicality of the
appearance does not exclude that it is a mere appearance.
As pointed out above, veridical hallucinations do not count as mere appearances in the
sense relevant here, since we defined “mere appearance that p” as a factive expression,
implying non-p.13 But even if it was granted that veridical hallucinations are mere
appearances, they differ relevantly from BFC-cases. The reason why it may sound plausible to
say that veridical hallucinations are mere appearances is that their “veridicality” is not due to
an appropriate perceptual relation to the fact in question (since otherwise the veridical
hallucination could no longer be distinguished from a real perception). By contrast, Henry’s
appearance that there is a barn over there does rest on a perceptual relation to the fact in
question, which explains why one is not inclined to classify it as a mere appearance. Hence,
even if it is granted that hallucinations, even if veridical, can be mere appearances, this can,
and ought to, be denied for BFC-cases.
V. Reformulating the Bad Case Disjunct
But there is another line the epistemological disjunctivist might take. Perhaps the “bad
case” can be reformulated in a way that captures not only mere appearances, but several
different kinds of “no-knowledge cases” as well. Since these situations have in common that
knowledge of the fact that p is not perceptually available to the subject, the most
straightforward suggestion for the second disjunct seems to be “It is not the case that p makes
itself perceptually manifest to S”. With this formulation in the place of the second disjunct,
both mere appearances and BFC-cases would be accounted for. But the disjunction would
13
Cf. section III.iii., fn. 8 above.
13
then become a mere tautology: Either the fact that p makes itself perceptually manifest to S or
it is not the case that the fact that p makes itself perceptually manifest to S. With this
disjunction in the consequence, ED1 would become trivially true and hence would not mark
out a distinctive conception of appearances.
A formulation that covers mere appearances and BFC-cases without thereby rendering
the disjunction tautological can be found in one of McDowell's recent writings where he
characterizes bad cases as “situations in which it is as if an objective state of affairs is making
itself manifest to a subject, although that is not how things are” (2008, p. 381).
Epistemological disjunctivism may thus be expressed by the following formula:
ED2
(a)If S has an appearance that p then
(b)the fact that p is making itself perceptually manifest to S or
(c)it is to S as if the fact that p is making itself perceptually manifest to her, although
that is not how things are.14
The second disjunct (c) in ED2 covers BFC-scenarios. It is to Henry as if the fact that
there is a barn over there was making itself manifest to him, but as things stand, this fact is not
making itself manifest to him. Perfect hallucinations (also veridical ones) and illusions, too,
may plausibly be grouped under (c) as well. Even though ED2 (c), in contrast to (c) in ED1, is
not factive in that it is neutral with respect to the truth of p, it is factive insofar as at least the
subject’s epistemic standing is not what it seems to her to be. Hence, there are two ways in
14
We found it useful to explicate the perceptual character of the fact manifestation. Without that qualification a
lot of non-perceptual cases would fall under (b) and (c), for example situations in which it is to one as if on
knows the solution of a mathematical problem.
14
which the phrase “that is not how things are” may turn out to be true: either because p is false,
or because, although p is true, that fact is not making itself manifest to S. It is this last feature
that allows ED2 to include BFC-scenarios in the second disjunct.
However, there are two kinds of cases which traditionally count as appearances, and
now do no longer fall under this disjunct.
First, a great deal of paradigm cases of illusions turn out not to be appearances. Think
of the notorious stick in the water looking bent. Generally, a grown-up person looking at such
a stick would hardly be inclined to believe that the stick is bent, because the situation is
significantly different from one in which one sees a bent stick. But nevertheless it is possible
– stretching ordinary language to some degree – to say that it appears to one that the stick is
bent. According to ED2, however, subjects in these perceptual situations cannot be said to
have an appearance that the stick is bent, because it is not to them as if the fact that that stick
is bent was made manifest to them.
Let us step back for a moment and ask how ED1 was able to deal with these kinds of
illusions. Imagine a subject to whom a stick inserted in water looks bent. The subject has
normal perceptual capacities and is not inclined to take the stick to be bent. But it seems
appropriate to characterize this as a case of a mere appearance of that stick being bent, and
thus as a perceptual appearance. ED1 can admit this because it restricts the content of the
appearance in (c) to the apparent fact (i.e. the fact that would have been perceived in the good
case). Therefore, ED1 can include cases of non-deceptive illusions as mere appearances.15 The
white wall looking red, the stick in water and the Müller-Lyer diagram are paradigms of
15
Admittedly, talk of an “appearance that this stick is bent” can suggest a more deceiving kind of illusion – one
in which a stick not only appears bent, but appears to be bent. But it is not essential to mere appearances that
they are deceptive.
15
“mere appearances” and therefore fall under the concept of an appearance. ED2, by contrast,
includes the subject’s epistemic standing with respect to the perceptually apparent fact within
the content of what appears to be the case (“it is to S as if the fact that p is making itself
perceptually manifest to her”). Although this allows for BFC-scenarios as cases of (c), it
excludes all non-deceptive illusions, since these simply cannot be classified as cases in which
it is to one as if a fact was making itself manifest to one.16
There is a second important group of situations which should be called perceptual
appearances, and which do have a place in ED1, but cannot be accommodated to ED2. What
we have in mind are the numerous situations in which subjects know (or at least reasonably
believe) that they hallucinate or face a perfect illusion. Suppose that, although I had first been
deluded by a cleverly made barn façade, I later come to know (by going around it) how things
really are. When I return to my original position and look at the façade again, things look
exactly like they did before (namely as if there was a barn before me), but it no longer is to
me as if the fact that there is barn was making itself manifest to me because now I know that
that is just a façade.
Now it seems natural to say that it still looks to me as if there is a barn, and thus ED1
could explain why this should be called a case of a perceptual appearance. But should we say,
as ED2 would require, that it is to me as if the fact that there is a barn was making itself
manifest to me? Arguably, my being in a position in which it is to me as if a fact was made
manifest to me should be incompatible with my knowledge that the fact doesn't obtain.
Nothing tells against the situation being phenomenally just like a situation in which I see that
16
One might oppose our suggestion to classify non-deceptive illusions as mere appearances and thereby as
appearances, and instead deny that these cases should count as “appearances that p”. In this case ED1 and
ED2 would both exclude paradigm cases of appearances from being appearances.
16
there is a barn, but the formulation of (c) in ED2 with its strong epistemological implication is
unable to allow for such a case.17
Maybe it is still an option for the epistemological disjunctivist to look for further
adjustments of (c) that accommodate all kinds of “bad cases”. A promising direction of
improvement could be to add qualifiers such as “it is to S, in some relevant respect, as if...”.
However, there is a general reason to doubt that any such attempts can succeed.
As already mentioned, there is an important difference in logical structure between
ED1 and ED2. Whereas in ED1 the scope of what appears to be the case for S is restricted to
p (the fact that is, in the good case, to be perceived), in ED2 the scope of what appears to be
the case also includes S's epistemic standing in relation to p. And it is precisely this feature of
ED2 that allows it to accommodate regular BFC cases because what the subject is mistaken
about in these cases is not the fact in question, but rather the subject’s epistemic standing with
respect to that fact. But as we can see now, this very feature excludes non-deceptive façade
viewings as well as other recognized illusions. We conclude that ED2 is inadequate since it is
able to handle BFC cases only at the cost of excluding other bona fide cases of appearances.
The result of this section is that neither of the proposed formulations of
epistemological disjunctivism provides an adequate account of perceptual appearances. ED1
fails because it cannot deal with BFC-counterexamples. Although it appears to Henry that
there is a barn it is neither a case of a fact making itself manifest to him nor a case of a mere
17
To this, McDowell might respond that he is interested exclusively in the epistemological concept of an
appearance (as introduced above in our response to Burge’s criticism) and that cases of recognized illusions
do not fall under that concept. However, that does not seem to be adequate, since recognized illusions,
despite the fact that they do not mislead us may very well be epistemologically relevant. For instance, a
subject may explain to herself her earlier perceptual error by noting that things look differently from what
they are. This is not merely a causal explanation, since it serves not only to explain, but also to justify the
mistaken belief, thus placing the appearance in the “logical space of reasons.”
17
appearance. ED2 fails because, due to its characterizing appearances in epistemic terms, it
cannot explain why non-deceptive illusions and perfect illusions with the relevant background
knowledge are instances of perceptual appearances.
VI. Possible Solution: Adding a Third Disjunct
Since there is no obvious reason why the disjunctive analysis of the concept of
perceptual appearance should be restricted to merely two disjuncts,18 it is possible to add a
further disjunct that covers BFC-cases. Doing so solves the problem we are concerned with,
since the implication (whenever someone has an appearance, then one of the disjuncts is true)
would no longer be falsified by BFC-scenarios. Let us therefore suggest the following “Barn
Façade Disjunct”:
ED3
(a)If S has an appearance that p then
(b)the fact that p makes itself perceptually manifest to S or
(c)it merely appears to S that p or
(d)S is in a position in which the knowledge that p would be available to S if it
were
not for the fact that S is in a barn-façade-like scenario.
For an epistemological concept of appearances, this looks like a promising solution.
Illusions and hallucinations (whether deceptive or not) are appearances because they are
instances of (c), and BFC-cases are accounted for by (d). As before, there is no reason to
suppose that this should actually be the complete disjunction. Perhaps there are further cases
of appearances not falling under (b), (c) or (d). A possible candidate has already been
18
This point has been advocated by Jonathan Dancy (1995).
18
mentioned – veridical hallucinations. These cannot be characterized as “mere appearances” in
the factive sense introduced above, because that would imply that the apparent facts do not
obtain. Thus, there seems to be room for the following (fourth) disjunct:
(e)S is in a surrounding in which the knowledge that p would be available to S if it
were not for the fact that S suffers from hallucination.
It seems now that we can offer a version of ED to the epistemological disjunctivist that
is able to accommodate all cases of appearances considered so far and can easily be extended
should further cases come up. We will now argue, however, that this solution is not
compatible with essential disjunctivism, and that this points to a fundamental problem for the
essential disjunctivist.
II. A Dilemma for Essential Disjunctivism
Let us start with the question how we can decide whether a given disjunctive account
of appearance is complete or not. As we just have seen, two disjuncts are not enough to
account for all bona fide cases of appearances. In our discussion, the assumption that certain
cases should count as appearances and therefore must have a place in the disjunction was
tacitly assumed. Thus, reliance on a prior grasp of the concept of appearance (prior to the
disjunctive analysis) allowed us to regard the BFC-story as a counterexample at all. The same
prior grasp was also necessary to recognize (e) as another possible disjunct. But this is bad
news for the essential disjunctivist, because she must assume that the content of the concept
of appearance is exhausted by the disjunction, which in turn means that competent mastery of
the concept of appearance presupposes knowledge of the complete disjunction. The only way
in which the essential disjunctivist can account for the fact that it was necessary to
19
acknowledge further disjuncts, is by saying that her grasp of the concept of appearance was
somehow incomplete. But that is utterly implausible. Rather it was her prior grasp of that
concept that allowed her to recognize cases such as BFC-scenarios as falling under the
concept of an appearance. In order to do so, she had to rely on some distinctive feature shared
by perceptions, mere appearances, BFC-scenarios, and, possibly, various other cases, and
which accounts for the fact that they all fall under the concept of an appearance. But this
means that essential disjunctivism is mistaken.
So let us now ask what this feature might consist in. A possible answer could be that
all these types of cases are phenomenally indistinguishable in the sense that being in one of
them cannot be distinguished on purely phenomenal grounds from being in any other with a
corresponding content. However, that seems too strong since paradigm illusions such as the
bent-looking stick in the water are quite often easily distinguishable from a corresponding
perception. A more plausible candidate for a defining feature for an appearance that p might
be a relevant phenomenal similarity to a perception that p.
We are not going to offer a precise account of what it takes for two different
perceptual states to be phenomenally similar. But let us say a few words about what kind of
phenomenal similarity we take to be relevant. Certainly, the sense in which seeing a tomato
and seeing a red t-shirt are phenomenally similar is not of any interest here since the one will
not commonly be mistaken for the other. In order for an illusion that p to be relevantly
phenomenally similar to a perception that p, it must be such that, background knowledge
apart, it may easily be mistaken for the corresponding perception. Therefore, recourse to
illusions can often figure as excuses for perceptual errors. This feature of phenomenal
similarity to perceptions is present in BFC-cases, in hallucinations and illusions of various
kinds and – since perceptions are phenomenally similar to themselves in the relevant way – in
20
perceptions that p. It is even present in non-deceptive illusions, since, background knowledge
apart, the possibility of being deceived is still virulent. The resulting conception of perceptual
appearance is essentially non-disjunctive, i.e. it can be specified exclusively by recourse to the
relevant phenomenal similarity to perceptions. Nevertheless, all cases that fall under the
descriptions of the various disjuncts are appearances according to this suggestion.
Since the essential disjunctivist must deny the possibility of such a non-disjunctive
characterization of appearances, she lacks any basis on which to decide whether BFC-cases
and non-deceptive illusions should count as cases of an appearance or not unless they are
already falling under one of the recognized disjuncts. The introduction of any further disjunct
(such as the BFC disjunct with respect to ED1) would, in an essentially disjunctivist
framework, appear to be completely arbitrary. According to essential disjunctivism as we
understand it, it is not possible to characterize the concept of an appearance prior to the
concepts that enter the characterization of the disjuncts. The specifications of good and bad
cases in the disjunction are conceptually prior to the disjunctive concept under which they
fall. In this way, the disjunctivist can acknowledge the primacy of factive concepts. The
problem with this, as we just have seen, is that it is incompatible with essential disjunctivism
once it is granted that there are more than two disjuncts.19
19
There is a different way in which the disjunctivist might try to acknowledge the primacy of factive concepts.
It consists in regarding the concept of perception as basic and deriving from it the concept of an appearance,
but to go on to argue that the factive concept of a mere appearance is conceptually dependent on the nonfactive concept of an appearance. More specifically, appearances would be understood as episodes that are
phenomenally relevantly similar to perceptions (which thus are conceptually prior); mere appearances would
then simply turn out to be all cases of appearances that are not perceptions. (This has been suggested to us by
John McDowell.) There are two problems with this proposal. First, it only works for two disjuncts; however,
we have argued that at least three disjuncts are necessary in order to account for all bona fide cases of
appearances. Second, the resulting picture no longer is essentially disjunctivist since it provides for a deeper
unity that accounts for the fact that good cases and bad cases alike fall under the concept of an appearance.
This unity consists in the phenomenal similarity between the good and the bad cases. Even though we need a
prior understanding of the good cases in order to specify the feature they share with the bad cases (i.e.
primacy of factive concepts, iiia), the fact that there is such a feature (phenomenal similarity) excludes
essential disjunctivism (ia).
21
VIII. Consequences
As we tried to show in this paper, epistemological disjunctivism has a problem
concerning BFC-scenarios. Either they do not count as perceptual appearances, or the
disjunctive analysis has to be extended in a way that must appear arbitrary in an essentially
disjunctive framework. But our investigation also has a positive result. There is a legitimate
non-disjunctive conception of appearance. What accounts for a mental state's being an
instance of a perceptual appearance that p is its relevant phenomenal similarity to a perception
that p. This similarity must not be identified with indistinguishability, since many appearances
that p are subjectively quite different from a perception that p.
This account relies on a characterization of appearances which is not exhausted by a
disjunctive analysis and thus is not essentially disjunctive. Nevertheless, this is no recoil to a
Highest Common Factor model. The proposed account is compatible with a non-conjunctive
theory of perception. A perception that p falls under the concept of an appearance because,
trivially, it is relevantly similar to a perception that p, not because it stands in some external
relation to reality (which mere appearances lack). All conscious states that are, according to
our suggestion, appearances that p share a common feature, but this does not imply that
perceptions and non-perceptions share an epistemologically relevant element – some inner
episode that alone is the immediate object of our awareness and, since its relation to external
objects is problematic, cuts us off from the world.
The term appearance is just a technical term, introduced for epistemological purposes.
As in ED1, there is a primacy of factive mental-state concepts lying at the heart of our
proposal, since the concept of an appearance is explained in terms of a similarity with
perceptions (which thus are conceptually primary). The account of perceptual appearances
22
offered here thus preserves the main insights of disjunctivism – the rejection of a HCF-model
and the primacy of factive mental-state concepts – without being committed to the essentially
disjunctive characterization of perceptual appearances.
23
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