Dang y'all it's more perception talk

PICKING UP FROM YESTERDAY ON MCDOWELL VS BURGE

I

So we have seen what Burge needs to be claiming, in order to hit McDowell's actual position (instead of the one he misleadingly attributes to him). He needs to be claiming that the perceptual state which characterizes one's subjectivity/point of view/access to the world is held in common between the three cases(Good, Bad, and Other) since that is what McDowell is concerned to deny. The question is whether the considerations Burge brins against disjunctivism have force against this position, or only against the one he misleadingly attributes. Let us see what he says.

II

Burge introduces the "Proximality Principle", which states that, assuming identical antecedent psychological state, two perceivers which receive identical proximal stimulation (e.g. same stimulation of retinas), as well as the same afferent and efferent input will produce a given type of perceptual state, assuming no malfunction or interference.

Burge claims that explanations of perceptual states in the science assume the Principle. It is "basic to the method of the science". The science studies perceptual states in artificial scenarios, ones in which there are illusions and such, and assumes that in doing so it is shedding light on the perceptual states we are in in cases which are not unusual. This is how the science studies perceptual states.

Burge claims that if the Principle is denied for a state, this is tantamount to the claim that any "normal causal psychological explanation is possible" for that state, since the normal methodology of psychological explanation takes the individual "as a unit", and denies action at a distance. This requires that the states of an individual be explained by proximal and internal things. Do these claims have force against the disjunctivist position McDowell is defending? Indeed they do, if true. The state McDowell is interested in, which characterizes one's subjectivity/access/whatever, is indeed a perceptual state. As such, if the Proximality Principle is true, it must be shared between the three cases. But McDowell claims it is not shared between the three case. If the Proximality Principle is true about the perceptual state that characterizes access/etc, McDowell is wrong about this perceptual state.

III

But what is the argument for the Proximality Principle? Burge simply says that perception science is committed to it, by its methods. Burge wants McDowell to be in opposition to perceptual science, which is why he is constantly emphasizing that McDowell is talking about a perceptual state, and perception science is too. What he needs is this.

1. Perception science is committed by its methods to the Proximality Principle's being true of its subjects. (From Burge's examples of how the science proceeds)
2. The state McDowell is talking about is a subject of perception sceince. (Burge keeps insisting this)

Therefore,

3. Perception science is committed to the Proximality Principle being true of the state McDowell is talking about. (From 1 and 2)

And only if McDowell were coming up against vision science in just such a way would the substance of Burge's accusation be accurate. In particular, his claim that not since Hegel claimed that there are only six planets for some (presumably bad) philosophical reason have we had such a brazen denial of science from philosophy.

IV

So, is this right? Is McDowell being that irresponsible?

I think Burge is probably right about the methods of perception science. I think it is the second claim, that this is a topic for perception science, taken as being constituted by its methods (and their committment to the Proximality Principle) where McDowell would disagree, and where the really interesting issue is. I think McDowell really is committed to saying that this perceptual state cannot be characterized by the methods of perceptual science Though, of course, perception science can say lots of helpful things about it, as long as their methods are committed to the Proximality Principle they cannot fully characterize it.

One way to put this would be to say that they will never get beyond the visual system, or perhaps the brain. They can characterize what it is that the brain is doing, but cannot characterize what we ourselves are doing, on McDowell's view. McDowell has indeed defended claims like this in the past (the "Content of Perception" paper, for example). He says that the methods of perception science are limited to descriptions of "subsystems", rather than "whole animal" states.

Burge denies this quite strongly. He says that perception science is committed to aiming at "whole animal" states because of its constituitive connection to whole animal actions such as eating, running away from stuff, etc. Indeed, somewhere (I can't remember quite where) he even disclaims on behalf of perception science a brain-mapping goal. He points out that this is not the goal–rather, perception science is after an adequate account of whole animal action and how it relates to perception as well as accounting for subjective reports of what one is perceiving, and so on.

At this level, Burge is surely right–perception science isn't talking about just something eyes do, for example. But there is a gap between establishing that perception science is describing a "whole animal" phenomenon and saying that it is describing the "whole animal" phenomenon that McDowell is interested in when he talks about "subjectivity". I do not think the "whole animal" vs. "subsystem" approach is a useful way to look at this question.

One thing which would serve to distinguish the two would be consciousness. Suppose McDowell were essentially interested in states which are essentially conscious (or characterize a subject's consciousness) and perceptual psychology were explicitly not about such states, then we would have a situation in which the states McDowell are talking about are not those perception science is studying.

But I do not think the issue can be seen this way. For one thing, McDowell doesn't say that he is constituitively interested in consciousness (or at least nowhere I can find). He does say that conscious states are states of this kind. But I don't think he wants to commit himself to the claim that all these states are by their nature conscious. So he thinks that some but not necessarily all of these states he is interested in are conscious, but all conscious states are states of this kind. Burge says similar things. He doesn't weigh in on what makes a state conscious, but he describes some of the states of perception he is interested in as themselves conscious states. As he sees it, I think, perception science really is trying to characterize conscious states. This is the point of his insistence on their taking subjective reports as their data–they are after representations which will account for all the data of consciousness.

Even if McDowell did think that the states in question were all conscious, this would not suffice to show that they are not the subject matter of perception science, since Burge (speaking on behalf of the science) claims that some of the states of perception are conscious. This means that some of the states studied by perception science (and therefore subject to their commitments) are part of the class McDowell is interested in.

V

So, for now, I think I do see McDowell as being in the position Burge is accusing–namely that of having his views conflict with those to which perception science is commmitted. Some perceptual states that are within the subject matter of perception science, the ones that characterize our "point of view", including the conscious ones, are said by McDowell to not be subject to the proximality principle. If perception science is indeed committed to this principle in studying those states, they are in conflict with one another.

But it is not clear that this is that bad a position for McDowell to be in. When it comes to the realm of access and especially of consciousness it is notoriously difficult to see how more of the kind of science we are engaging in now can provide us with a satisfying explanation. McDowell is certainly able to take on board much of the business of perception science as characterizing something important, but he is committed to saying that if they take themselves to be characterizing the states that constitute our subjectivity, as Burge says they are, then they are mistaken.

LIEDERKREISIS, also, Perception

Greetings folks,

Terrible news regarding the next installment of our musical tale of terror. I am missing cords on my keyboard, and until they are replaced it must of electronical necessity remain silent, and I ain't about to try and record something a cappella. This means our tale is on HIATUS until I find some suitable cords. This is pretty unfortunate. But I'll keep writing the stuff so hopefully I can do those chords up quick once I get those cords.

Anyway, instead of a song you get reflections on the Burge/disjunctivist dispute about perception. I am currently trying to figure out what the issue here is, in order to later find out who is right. It is kinda hard. There might be mistakes in this.

So: perception and hallucination. Consider the case when I look at George and see him just as he in fact is. We will call this the "Good Case". The case in which it merely seems to me that I am looking at him, but I am in fact hallucinating his being there, will be the "Bad Case". Call the case in which I am looking at someone who appears just the same as George, but is in fact a different person, the "Other Case". These three cases could be totally indiscriminable for me.

Tyler Burge characterizes the position he calls "disjunctivism" as holding that there is no "explanatorily relevant mental state type in common between" the Good Case, the Bad Case, and the Other Case. (Disjunctivism and Perceptual Psychology, page 25.) Then he goes on to say many things about how this is inconsistent with perceptual science.

But first: is this a position that is worth arguing against? Does anyone hold this position? Certainly most of those Burge takes as his targets do not. McDowell and Campbell, for example, would not wish to defend this claim. As McDowell says of this characterization, "the fact is that the position is not there in my work." In particular, McDowell thinks there are some states in common between the cases--at least, he agrees that the state of its seeming to the subject that things are thus and so is a state that is in common between these cases. I guess we don't have to read Burge's (massive) anti-disjunctivist paper, since it looks like he has missed his target.

Except that the quoted remark above cannot be what Burge means. For one thing, surely Burge thinks that even the most backward-thinking disjunctivist would agree that in all three cases, the subject might currently have the belief that his eyes are open. This is true in all three cases, and all three subjects might believe it. And this shared belief is a shared state, and it would surely be "explanatorily relevant" for at least some purposes--for example, explaining why all three would say, "yes" if you asked whether their eyes were open. Disjunctivists would not wish to deny this, and surely Burge knows this perfectly well. So the quote is a sloppy formulation.

In fact, I think it is sloppy in a way that masks the fact that Burge actually does mean to be attacking the real disjunctivist position. When Burge is being more careful, he says things like that disjunctivism is the view that "there is never any specific perceptual-state kind in common between" the three cases. (DaPP, page 2) So beliefs are not at issue here. And perhaps the states that folks like McDowell think are in common between the three cases are not at issue either. It all depends on whether they are "perceptual-state kinds". And this depends on what Burge means by perception.

What is it that McDowell thinks is not shared between these cases? He thinks that the state that is relevant to characterize the subject's "subjectivity", or "access to the world" or "perspective" on the world. Only if Burge means something like this by "perception" will he be really attacking McDowell.

But even this is plainly not going to do. As Burge surely realizes, you have more that one sense, and perhaps we should think of you as having more than one perceptual state at once. We have perceptual states of seeing, but also of touch and hearing and so on. And surely he does not mean to be saddling the disjunctivist with the view that if you are having a visual hallucination or illusion, you cannot have a perceptual state of the auditory system in common with someone in the Good Case. So Burge needs to mean something even more restricted that what I mentioned above.

Burge needs to be accusing the disjunctivist of claiming that the perceptual state kind which characterizes our visual access/subjectivity/epistemic state/whatever cannot be in common between the three cases. I think the disjunctivist does believe this, if we understand "/the/ state" to include whatever is relevant to those things. And I think Burge wants to deny this.

When Burge talks about "perception", he says that he is talking constituitively about a state which characterizes what he calls our "point of view" and our "perspective", and I'm pretty sure he means to be characterizing just this phenomenon of "subjectivity". He thinks that these states characterize our access to the world. These are representational states, and their representational content is what accounts for our "perspective" on the world.

The problem was, the formulation Burge gave was much too broad. There is one further way in which it might still be too broad, even with Burge's understanding of perception. Burge thinks that consciousness is not essential to a perceptual state. I am not sure yet whether McDowell thinks of the states that constitute subjectivity are essentially conscious or not. If they are, then Burge might still be accusing him of holding a position he does not hold, if Burge says that disjunctivists deny the sharing of perceptual states in Burge's sense. They might only deny the sharing of perceptual states in a narrower sense in which they all must include consciousness.

However, I think Burge thinks that perceptual states /are/ often conscious. So I think he would be happy to build consciousness into the claim above that he is saying dsjunctivists deny. Thus, he is saying that disjunctivists will deny that the perceptual state-type that characterizes one's visual subjectivity/point of view/whatever, which is conscious, is the same between the three cases. I think that
Burge thinks that it is, and thinks that science necessitates our taking it to be so. I also think that disjunctivists such as McDowell would deny this. Hence, I think this recovers the disagreement that Burge means to have, and still leaves Burge with the argumentative resources he had before, which he thinks are sufficient to refute disjunctivism in the sense McDowell holds it.

ARE THEY? Time to go find out. Goodbye.

Til the break of DAWN

Hello Internet!

Today's installment of our ongoing musical tale, Girl From the North Country, marks the introduction of a new character! Submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society, I give you...

The General

(Click here for song)

I ruined a Turing Test with my ESP
Every bo-bo-body wants a piece of me,
I'm the only man of energy you'll ever see
And I ruined the Turin Shroud with a stream of my pee

In the sun I turn black while you folks probably tan,
At the sight of the moon, I turn into a man
It doesn't even have to be full.

Well Scotland Yard calls when they got a difficult case,
And I won myself a medal in a zeppelin race
I stole the Bird's Eye emerald without leaving a trace,
And you'll quit your job if you see my face.

I spent thirteen years living under a bridge,
I could live thirteen more on just what's in your fridge,
It doesn't even have to be full.

Ich habe für Sie ein Angebot.
Ich habe gehört, du bist in Not.
Freilich, Blut ist immer noch rot,
Und wenn man stirbt, bleibt man immerdar tot.

(Asking for money in a manner appropriate to a douche)

THE END



Clearly here we have a fascinating character whose true analysis is a puzzle for the ages. Literature students, you may commence your dissertations.

As for how this guy fits into the main story, at this rate, we will probably find out in 2-3 years.

Further songage will be going up hopefully before the end of the month.

FAREWELL

Second song finished!

So there was no post last month, computer trouble, blah blah blah. Apparently my X-treme computer use has a tendency to destroy power supplies. Maybe I should stop purchasing them for four dollars out of dusty cardboard boxes at that place on Queen street.

Anyway, I will catch up though, or this tale will never come to a close. So this is June's post, and there will be two more before September first, or I'll eat my hat.

Today we have the final part of the second song, entitled, "A Visit from Mikyle." Here are links to the parts, in order:

Part One
Part Two
Part Three

And here are the lyrics to the whole thing. I should point out that there is occasionally differences between what is written and what shows up on the recorded song, usually with the result that the recorded one is worse. This is largely because I forget how the words go while singing them, and because sometimes I change things after I have recorded and I don't want to record it again. The important thing is that the lyrics as they appear here are canon. Submitted, of course, for the approval of the Midnight Society, I call this song:

Girl From the North Country, Part Two: A Visit from Mikyle

Silence did fall,
All hands reached for swords
Every eye in the hall
Was on the slowly opening door,

But the tensely held breath
Was all at once released,
In shouts or sighs which expressed
Joy and also relief,

For there stood a lad,
Sickly and pale and thin,
His eyes were tired and sad,
But his mouth managed a grin.

Weak steps took him down the aisle
He stumbled toward King Gray
Who greeted his nephew Mikyle
Who'd been missing for many a day,

He'd disappeared late one night and
Since then no one knew where he'd been,
They thought he'd been murdered by an enemy hand
Though no rival clans had been seen.

Mikyle stood wobbly before his king,
Clasped his hand, with a grip that was weak,
And you had to strain to hear anything,
As the young man started to speak...

He said...

Don't know how long I've been lost,
How I left the city walls
I remember going to sleep,
And dreaming strange things from the night

Next I know it's icy chill
River rushing rages round
River of the twisted Bone
Screaming carried far away

Taken by the Bone to where
Soundless things are on the bank
Trees are blotting out the sun
Dark and green and dark and green

Ah, my brains they're dark and green,
How I'm here I don't know how
Soundless things are singing still
Want to be myself again.



His eyes they spun round and round
And his grin was empty and wide
And the hall rang with the cruel sound
Of laughter from Darkholme's side.

His own clan grimly looked on
to see what their King would say
With madness Mikyle's pained eyes shone
While sorrow swam those of King Gray.

Behind him stood the Queen and Fyfe
His son's head was sad and low.
But Sparrow stood straight like a knife
Her muscles tense like a bow.

To his nephew the king moved near
And he took the boy in an embrace.
He spoke now into his ear.
He could not see into his face.

He could not see into the eyes,
Of the boy who was no longer free.
He could not see into his nephew's eyes
But Sparrow could see.

Mikyle's arms reached 'round the King
And buried themselves in the robes of state
Sparrow shouted a kind of warning
Too late.

The lad fell back into the aisle
And in his mouth something was wrong,
Instead of the empty smile, there was a
gruesome song.




The old King sways, now he's falling down,
Lands on the floor, makes a royal mound.

Wheeze and gasp and moan, cough and choke and hack
Grasping at his back, grasping at his back,

Fyfe rushes up, looks for what is wrong,
Finds a wooden spike, smooth and hard and long.

All around the wound, all around is seen,
Sticky dripping stuff, stuff that's dark and green.

Dark and green and thick, smeared all on the wood
Fyfe could smell it now, smelled like nothing should

Takes it in his hand, grabs the end that's dull,
Weapon comes right out, barely had to pull,

Little Christmas hole, weeping red and green,
But over with Mikyle, it was Hallowe'en.



Mouth, something black inside,
Teeth, forced open wide.

Screams, muffled by the black,
Jaws, make an awful crack

Something's bursting out, something makes you sick
Bulging hanging down, ropy black and thick,

Hanging like a vine, splits and makes a twin,
What was one and thick, now is two and thin,

Splits again again, four and five and six,
writhing whipping tongues, seething dripping licks

While the dying King, whispers with his son,
Pulls his ear down close, strength is almost done.

Lips are moving slow, King is trying to talk
Meanwhile the Darkholmes have ceased to mock

Shudders in his robes, gives a final jerk
The poison had done its work.



Fyfe slowly lifts his head,
from his father, who's lying dead

Rest of his band, do not move or talk,
Rough and dangerous men, frozen now in shock.

Looking at the kid, what was once the kid,
complicated face, writhing like a squid

Fyfe sees him too, blinded by his rage
Raises weapon high, ready to engage

But what of the queen, she is staring too,
You might think in shock but it isn't true.

All we need say now, is she will not act,
Hers are jeweller's eyes as the Prince attacks.

While Mikyles own, sit atop the mess,
And they weep showing great distress

Agonizing lie, if only it were true
That you've got a soul, and the soul has you.

(Together forever...)

Well, Fyfe made his move at the anguished lad,
Shouting something about his dad

Then a massive tree slammed into the hall,
crushing all the men sitting by the wall.

Men are trapped, beneath the tree so large
This stops Fyfe, in the middle of his charge.

And that's when a vine from his cousin's nest,
Come snaking out, followed by the rest.

Wrapping round the prince, binding him up tight,
Dragging him behind, Fyfe tries to fight

Climbs into the tree, branches dark and thick,
Moving down the trunk, how's he move so quick,

Makes it to the hole, storm is howling in,
Fyfe held tight by the writhing chin,

Mikyle looks back once, what an awful sight
But then they're gone, into the night.


The end of the second song!

...take that, dualism.

What do you think about the stars in the sky?

Greetings humans,

Today, we have the second, but not the last, part of what was originally intended to only have one part. This is why when people ask for estimates of how long this story will be if it is ever finished, I conservatively go with about six hours. Factor in the fact that I'm producing an average of about two minutes a month, and we soon get the result that this will take fifteen years to complete. I'm cool with this. The conclusion to this part of the story is also almost finished and will appear sometime next month.

So far, we have had the first song, (Prologue) and the first section of the second song, which is going to be pretty long. (The Visitor, section one) And today, we have section two. Listening again to section one might be a good idea because otherwise there might be...confusing anaphora?

Words included, as always. Submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society, I call this story:

Girl from the North Country Part Two: The Visitor (section two)

(click here for song)

His eyes they spun round and round
And his grin was empty and wide
And the hall rang now with the sound
Of laughter from Darkholme's side.

His own clan grimly looked on
to see what their King would say
With madness Mikyle's pained eyes shone
Whil sorrow swam in those of King Gray.

Behind him stood the Queen and Fyfe
His son's head was and low
But Sparrow stood straight like a knife
Her muscles tense like a bow.

To his nephew the king moved near
And he took the boy in an embrace.
He spoke now into his ear, but
He could not see into his face.

He could not see into eyes,
Of the boy who was no longer free
He could not see into his newphew's eyes
But Sparrow could see.

Mikyle's arms reached 'round the King
And buried themselevs in the robes of state
Sparrow shouted a kind of warning
Too late.

The lad fell back into the aisle
And in his mouth something was wrong,
Instead of the empty smile, there was a
gruesome song.

THE END

...what does that even mean? We shall find out next month!

Girl From the North Country, Part Two (Well, Part One of Part Two)

Greetings!

I find myself inclined to write more things on McDowell, generally disagreeing with most of the stuff I wrote last time and now establishing once and for all forever the truth concerning McDowell's argument and its proper evaluation. However, instead you get the second song in my Epic Political Medieval Northern European Horror Ballad, Girl From the North Country. Well, half of that song, anyway, the second half to follow within a month. Once again, lyrics provided because they are kinda hard to hear maybe. Submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society, I call this song:

Girl From The North Country, Song Two:

The Visitor (Part One)

(click here for song)

And silence did fall,
And hands reached for swords
All eyes in the hall
Were on the slowly opening door,

But the tensely held breath
Was all at once released,
In shouts or sighs which expressed
Joy; also, relief,

For there stood a lad,
Sickly and pale and thin,
His eyes were tired and sad,
But his mouth managed a grin.

Weak steps took him down the aisle
He stumbled toward King Gray
Who greeted his nephew Mikyle
He'd been missing for many a day,

He'd disappeared late one night and
Since then no one knew where he'd been,
They thought he'd been murdered by an enemy hand
Though no rival clans had been seen.

Mikhail stood wobbly before his king,
Clasped his hand, with a grip that was weak,
And you had to strain to hear anything,
As the young man started to speak...

He said...

Don't know how long I've been lost,
How I left the city walls
I remember going to sleep,
And dreaming strange things from the night

Next I know it's icy chill
River rushing rages round
River I think was the Bone
Screaming carried far away

Taken by the Bone to where
Soundless things are on the bank
Trees are blotting out the sun
Dark and green and dark and green

Ah my brains they're dark and green,
How I'm here I don't know how
Soundless things are singing still
Want to be myself again.


THE END OF PART ONE OF PART TWO.

Yeah obviously the guys in the North Country name their rivers after things that come out of dudes when you chop them. Remember these are some HARDCORE CHARACTERS, see the last song if you forgot. Dangerous dudes!

In the Space of Reasons, No One Can Hear You Ask John McDowell To Give Arguments For Things

That's right, occasionally philosophy goes down here at the Abominable Doctor Lauben.

Today, the subject is Mind and World (which I haven't finished, I'm on Lecture Four).

As near as I can tell, McDowell is arguing like this.

P1) If thought (e.g. beliefs) is to have empirical content, it must be "answerable to" experience, in the sense that experience must be a "tribunal", in the sense that...something or other.
P2) If experience is to be the kind of thing that thought can be "answerable to", in the sense that it is to be a kind of "tribunal", in the sense that...something or other, then it must be conceptual.
P3) Thought has empirical content.

C1) So thought is "answerable to", etc., experience.
C2) So experience is conceptual.

I really want arguments for P1 and P2. Not to say McDowell doesn't give some in Mind and World, it's just that I'm having a lot of trouble finding them.

Denying P1 puts you in a camp with Davidson, so you'd think that the parts discussing him would give you the arguments against denying P1, but McDowell makes it look like Davidson's only failing is just THAT he denies P1. I agree that if P1 is true, Davidson's moves which ensure that your beliefs are "true" because of the interpretation stuff are wholly unsatisfying. But that's only if P1 is true, and I haven't yet figured out why that is supposed to be. But I don't want to talk about P1.

Denying P2 makes you Evans, or any other Mythologist of the Given. The discussion of Evans is similar, in that Evans' chief failing is that he denies P2, which makes his talk of "content" just a distraction. P2 is what I am trying to get clearer on. It seems to me that there is a way to understand it in which it is obviously true (so true as to not need argument, even!), and in understanding P2 that way, it sheds light on the "tribunal stuff" because that stuff is in the antecedent of P2.

Why should we accept that if experience is to be a tribunal or whatever, it must be conceptual? To find out, we need more information on what it is to be a tribunal or whatever, and what it is to be conceptual.

The second thing first. There are two notions of "conceptual" at play here.

In one way, everything is "conceptual" for McDowell, in that there is nothing in the world that is outside the space of concepts, impinging on it. In this sense, things are conceptual if they are the kind of things that are graspable in thought. Everyone agrees that experience is conceptual in this sense--or perhaps, that "That I am having X experience" is conceptual, if only entire facts are thinkable.

But it is the other sense in which McDowell controversially thinks experience is conceptual. He thinks that the very same capacities which are "active" in "spontaneity" (thinking, judging, etc.) are "at play" in experience. The very same capacities being at play is what it is to be conceptual in the important sense, the one in which experience is controversially held to be conceptual.

As for the tribunal thing, we are told that experience's being a "Tribunal" in this way involves its standing in justifying (and not mere exculpating) relations to thoughts. McDowell says that anything that can stand in these relations must be conceptual in the above sense. The relations include "implication" and "probabilification", as well as "warranting" and "justifying", and we are also told that non-conceptual things cannot be a "subject's reason" for a judgement.

Now, in an ordinary way of thinking, everything but the last thing doesn't seem true.

It is THAT this die is fair that makes it probable (probabilifies?) THAT it will come up with a number other than one. This is conceptual in the first, but not the second sense(the sense McD needs experience to be conceptual). It is THAT people do philosophy in a room that implies THAT people sometimes are in that room. Again, first, not second sense of conceptual.

Furthermore, it is ordinary to say that it is THAT 368 is an even number that justifies me in thinking it is not prime, and THAT John MacFarlane is awesome that warrants my thinking he would be good to do a qualifying exam question with. This is at least an ordinary way of talking, though something about it seems peculiar. Certainly if you asked me why I thought 368 was not prime, I might tell you "because it is even", rather than "because I believe it is even". It's the fact I mention, not the belief. But, of course, I would have no access to the fact without the belief.

This consideration links up with the third thing he says: nothing can be MY REASON for a belief unless it is conceptual(in the second sense). I would be inclined to make the same move here--no, my reason for believing that P is that Q, not my belief that Q. Again, that is how we talk, but again, there is an intuition, that something is strange here. Q would not, and could not, be my reason for P unless I had some ACCESS to Q--paradigmatically, a BELIEF (something conceptual in the second sense) that Q.

Terminological disputes aside, it seems like this is McDowell's point--whatever is to give you ACCESS to the thing that is something you will cite as a reason must be conceptual. And then, since we can't make sense of content unless experience can give us access to things we will cite as reasons for belief, experience must be conceptual.

And if concepts are the capacities for thinking about stuff, this makes P2 seem pretty dang reasonable. (It is split into two premises in the following, and P1 is reinterpreted to be in line with the above thoughts).

P1) Experience must give me access (in this special way) to the facts that I will take to be my reasons for belief (these are also the facts which justify and warrant beliefs, and which imply and probabilify other facts) if we are to make sense of content.
P2) I have no access (in this way) to something unless I can think it.
P3) Conceptual capacities are the only capacities to think stuff I have.

C1) Experience must allow me to think facts.
C2) Experience must involve conceptual capacities in some way.


(P2 from before is not P2 and P3). Thinking about how P2 could be true has given a new understanding of what the tribunal stuff mentioned in both P1 and P2 is supposed to be, which changes how P1 looks. I still don't know why P1 is supposed to be true, but at least P2 seems true if this is what it means.

JIM OUT