How to Prove the External World

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How to Prove There is an External World

Suppose you are doing metaphysics, working on which worlds are possible worlds. It occurs to you that no worlds can be immaterial; the idea makes no sense. Thus, you conclude that all worlds must be material. Your paradigms of the material are solid bounded objects in space. You then wonder whether the existence of such things can be proven—after all, there can be perceptual illusions. Don’t they have to be inferred from data that don’t logically entail their existence? Your metaphysics then poses a problem for your epistemology. But then, relief comes in the form of the Cogito: you can prove that you exist, and you can prove that everything that exists must be material, so you can prove that at least one material thing exists. And if one exists, why not others? That thing will have parts that may separate and recombine forming other objects. Your existence thus entails the existence of material objects, given reasonable assumptions. Your metaphysics plus the Cogitogives you an external world. Similarly, your metaphysics might dictate that all possible existences exist in space (the alternative is inconceivable): asked to prove that space and spatial objects exist, you wheel out the Cogito again—you know that you exist and that everything that exists is spatial. A necessary truth in metaphysics joins with the certainty of the Cogito to prove the existence of something that goes beyond the appearances—the real existence of things in space. It wasn’t your aim to prove the existence of an external world, but per accidens you did, thanks to the Cogito.

Sometime later you hit on another metaphysical truth: every possible world is law-governed; so, the actual world must be law-governed too. You think this because otherwise the world would be unintelligible chaos; nothing would be explicable; crazy senseless things would happen all the time (marbles turning into pigs, etc.) You might hold that every world must be subject to strict laws and nothing but strict laws, or you might relax this to require only some strict laws coexisting with non-strict laws; you draw the line at worlds consisting of nothing but non-strict laws. You might hold that causation requires strict laws (though there may also be non-strict causal laws), and that every world must include causation. But how do you establish that these laws must concern an external physical world? The Cogito won’t help you, but something close to it might: for the mind is subject to psychological laws and these are non-strict. This you know from first-person inspection. But every world must contain at least some strict laws, so there must be laws other than psychological laws; by elimination, these must be physical. Your metaphysics of causation and laws entails that there must be strict laws in every possible world, but they cannot be psychological, so they must be physical. Therefore, there must be a physical reality in every possible world, given that psychological laws are non-strict. If these laws were strict, then this argument wouldn’t work, since they could constitute the laws of the universe in which such minds exist. You know your mind exists (“I think”) and you know it doesn’t obey strict laws; therefore, it must exist in a world not exhausted by its own existence, i.e., a physical world. You can prove the existence of the external world from the lack of strict laws governing your mind plus your metaphysics. We get a kind of physical Cogito: “My mind does not obey strict laws, therefore the external world exists”. The argument works because your metaphysics allows it to, since it requires every world to contain (some) strict laws. To be concrete, I know that I don’t always act on a given desire, though I sometimes do, so there must be a strict law underlying this causal fact; and this has to be physical.[1] I can use the metaphysics of causation to prove that the external world exists—facts outside my mind. If worlds could subsist on non-strict laws all the way down, then I couldn’t argue this way, since my mind would satisfy the conditions necessary for world existence. But if worlds need strict nomological nourishment, I can argue this way. Thus, metaphysics has its epistemological uses. We are not trying to establish the existence of the external world by showing how we can infer it from our sense-data; we are relying instead on metaphysical truths about the possibilities of existence plus some first-person knowledge of the mind. It’s not about reasons for belief, good or bad, but how reality has to be.[2]

[1] This argument resembles Davidson’s argument for the identity theory in “Mental Events”.

[2] This paper should be read in conjunction with my “A New Proof of the External World”. A popular style of argument is that we know there is an external world in the way a scientist knows a theory of some part of nature, i.e., by inference to the best explanation or some such thing. The knowledge is based on sensory evidence, though not reducible to it. By contrast, I am grounding such knowledge in metaphysical necessities and introspective access.

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A New Proof of the External World

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A New Proof of the External World

It would be nice to be able to prove the existence of the external world (it would also be nice if there were a heaven). I am going to consider an argument that purports to do just that, not because I think it is sound, but because I think it is interesting. It is not simple like “I think, therefore I exist”; it isn’t anything like “It doesn’t think, therefore it exists”, which is not exactly watertight (more alcohol-tight, as in drunken). Nor did it occur to me while reading somebody famous and thinking that it might be an interpretation of that philosopher. As far as I know, it is spanking new–and rather infuriating; I think of it as an almost-proof. We can call it “the intelligibility argument”. In outline, it goes as follows: the world as represented by our experience and thought is not an intelligible world; but the real world is and must be an intelligible world; therefore, there must be another world external to our experience and thought. Let’s call the world represented by the human mind the “intentional world”: the claim, then, is that the intentional world cannot be all there is, because it is not fully intelligible; but reality must always be fully intelligible. There are no unintelligible real non-intentional worlds. The human intentional world has a lot of unintelligibility built into it, but then it cannot be real; so, there must be a further reality outside that world. To put it in more familiar terms, the world of the human imagination must be only part of a wider world that is not intrinsically unintelligible—which is our commonsense conception. If the imagined world were all there is, then reality would be inherently unintelligible (partly or wholly): but that cannot be; therefore, there must be more than this world.

There is a lot here to explain and I want to be brief. By an intelligible world I mean roughly one that is governed by laws which have some kind of necessity (this is sometimes called ontological rationalism). Nature must be uniform; it can’t be completely unpredictable and random. It can’t contain logical impossibilities. It can’t be intrinsically nonsensical. Classical mechanism provides a good model, though not the only one conceivable: chunks of matter conforming to Euclidian geometry and laws that could not be otherwise. This can be modified and extended in various ways, though not to the point of incoherence and madness. The world must work according to general principles that make sense. The intentional world is not intelligible in this sense: it is full of incoherence, illogicality, sheer nonsense, and breakdowns of natural law. I don’t mean anything exotic by this—it is a matter of common knowledge. Thus, dreams, fantasy fiction, Escher drawings, meaningless sentences, category mistakes, astrology, alchemy, visual illusions, imaginary scenarios of one kind or another. Take Escher drawings: these cannot depict possibly real things—there could not be a world composed of such things. Likewise, dream worlds are often impossible worlds, where things change lawlessly, illogically. The point is that the human mind is creative beyond the bounds of intelligibility. Therefore, our intentional world cannot be a real world. In fact, of course, we don’t suppose that it is: we assume that there is a world beyond this that obeys suitable laws—an intelligible natural world, free of absurdity. This world cannot be our world—the things we conjure up in our over-imaginative minds. It is thus part of our “conceptual scheme” that these two worlds must be kept apart, on pain of endowing reality with nonsense.

Suppose a creature lived in an intentional world of complete nonsense. It couldn’t be that this world was identical to the real world, or else reality would be nonsensical. The reality in which this creature actually lives is not objectively nonsensical; it just represents reality that way. We are like that: we know that reality cannot be as we imagine it—we know our intentional world is not the real world. But could our intentional world be all there is, with no reality beyond it? Could it all be a dream, even the non-dreaming world (as we commonly suppose it)? You might think the answer is no, because then reality would be unintelligible, consisting of nothing but our unintelligible intentional world. But that is too hasty: for we must not confuse our intentional world with our mental life–the world of our imaginative acts, our illusory perceptions, our episodes of dreaming, etc. It may well be that the world of the mind itself, as opposed to its intentional objects, is an intelligible world—a world governed by necessary intelligible laws. Psychology might be an intelligible natural science, while its intentional objects are the very antithesis of science. So, the world of our imagination is a real world, though what we imagine is not. There is then no valid argument to a distinct intelligible physical world; we already have a real coherent world in the shape of our own minds. A world containing only our minds is therefore metaphysically possible, no matter how unintelligible our minds may be in their intentional objects. After all, madness is real. It might be replied that we could adopt a different argumentative strategy: we could argue that such a mind would need a mind-independent physical brain to house it. That may be a sound move, but then we have dropped the intelligibility argument and replaced it with a new argument. This is why I said we only have an almost-proof. It is true that if the mind itself were not subject to intelligible laws, as well as its intentional objects, then we could apply the original argument—such a thing is metaphysically impossible, because reality cannot be intrinsically unintelligible. But the mind could be fully intelligible, even mechanistic, compatibly with being overrun by representations of the unintelligible. What we have is a proof that our intentional world is not the real world, so that some other world must exist to make it possible, either external to our mind (as we commonly suppose) or just the mind itself considered independently of its unintelligible contents. We know that reality cannot be the world as we imagine it, because that world is not a proper candidate for reality, by the intelligibility argument; but we have no proof that the further world must be the external world. It could, for all we have said, be the internal world, assuming that this is itself intelligible. It cannot be unintelligibility all the way down, but the bottom might be intelligible mental acts with unintelligible contents. Close, but no cigar. I suppose it might be objected that this position is suspiciously stipulative—we are just stipulating that the mind is a law-governed intelligible reality in order to avoid the inference to the real world as we commonly think of it. It has been conceded that our intentional world cannot be the real world, which was the main target of the argument. All we have left is the claim that the mind must be intelligible, i.e., governed by laws that make sense. We have no clear idea of what these laws might be; they are surely not the same as the mechanistic laws of matter. What are the laws governing dreams, illogical reasoning, and Escher-drawing perception? Might there be no such laws? Then we would be able to move to the desired (heavenly) conclusion that there must be an external world over and above the mind and its products. In any case, the dialectic has its own interest and charm, and that is all I promised.[1]

[1] It would be interesting to run the argument on mathematics or logic. We can agree that mathematics is inherently intelligible, and we can probably agree that it is possible to have unintelligible mathematical thoughts; but then mathematical reality cannot coincide with mathematical thoughts. Still, if unintelligible mathematical thoughts are psychologically intelligible, then we can’t use an intelligibility argument to infer that mathematical reality exists independently of mathematical thought, since we can fall back on psychological intelligibility to block the move to mathematical realism. The same structure applies to logic—and indeed to ethics. Ethical reality must be intelligible, but ethical thought may not be; therefore, ethical reality cannot be the same as ethical thought. Discuss.

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Analysis of Perceptual Knowledge

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Analysis of Perceptual Knowledge

Suppose I see a bird in the sky, thereby coming to know there is a bird in the sky (of a certain shape and color). I don’t form the belief that there is a bird in the sky; I simply know by perceiving. I might not be a believer at all, as many knowing animals are not. What is the correct analysis of my state of knowledge? It isn’t going to be that I have a true justified belief about the bird, because I don’t have that belief. Nor do I make a statement to that effect. I simply have the experience. That is a necessary condition of knowing perceptually—I do need to be in some sort of psychological state analogous to belief. But it is not sufficient. Clearly, we need to add that the experience is veridical: there really is a bird there fitting my experience (to some degree). Is thatsufficient? We can add that my experience must justify my claim to knowledge, if I make any such claim. But I might not make any knowledge claim, and we have already said that the experience must occur and it is justification enough—unlike the case of belief, which requires something further (typically an experience). So, the analysis seems very simple: x perceptually knows that p if and only if (a) x has an experience as of p, and (b) x’s experience is veridical.

Are there any counterexamples to this analysis? What if there is no causal connection between bird and experience? Normally, there will be, but what if we set up an abnormal situation in which the causal connection is absent? I don’t think it matters: x will still perceptually know about the bird. Information as to bird presence will still be flowing into x’s nervous system, whether from the bird or otherwise: he is being informed, rightly or wrongly, of a bird up there. And in fact, there is, so he knows. If causality is a myth and the world is ordered by pre-established harmony, it makes no difference to x’s status as knowing. Are there any Gettier-type cases? No, because no inference takes place: it is not like inferring that Jones owns a Ford from seeing him drive up in a Ford, where the Ford is not his, though he in fact owns a Ford. I was not inferring one belief from another in the bird case; I just directly knew that the bird was up there without any inference. Are there any “red barn” cases? I see a red barn after seeing a bunch of fake barns: intuitively, this undermines my claim to know that there’s a red barn there, since I am only right in this one case “by accident”. Actually, I don’t think this is the case for primitive perceptual knowledge: I do perceptually know about the barn despite the veridicality condition failing in the other cases of apparent barns. For the barn in question is seen by me and I have accurate information about it; it doesn’t matter about the fake barns surrounding it. I am in the perceptual state of having information about that barn, since I am seeing it; and seeing is knowing. No one claims that I don’t see the one genuine barn, but then I know about it visually. Perceptual knowing is about the operation of the senses on an occasion; it isn’t about what beliefs one can infer from perception. Do I know that I know about the barn, i.e., have a true justified belief about my perceptual state? Probably not, but that doesn’t stop me from having perceptual knowledge of the barn. There is a real barn there and I have a sense impression of that barn. Veridical experience is sufficient for perceptual knowledge.

Thus, we appear to be in the clear concerning our analysis: we have got it right. This contrasts with what is called propositional knowledge (the true justified belief kind): this kind of knowledge has resisted complete analysis. So, it isn’t that knowledge per se is hard or impossible to analyze; it’s just one type of knowledge that is. Knowledge in general isn’t conceptually problematic, or undermines the whole project of conceptual analysis; perceptual knowledge is easy to analyze, and it shows that conceptual analysis is a feasible undertaking. Epistemologists have not surveyed the field of knowledge widely enough. In the fundamental case of perceptual knowledge, the old bipartite analysis works just fine: a psychological state plus a veridicality condition. Knowledge consists of a psychological state of the knower and correspondence with reality, plain and simple.[1]

[1] The significance of this point is that the whole industry of counterexamples to the traditional analysis of knowledge has been overblown: knowledge is not so recalcitrant to analysis as has been supposed. An important class of knowledge has an easy and pellucid analysis consisting of just two conditions. Of course, that should already have been obvious from the cases of knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge-how: these are clearly not subject to Gettier-type cases. What to say about so-called propositional knowledge is another question (I discuss it in Truth by Analysis).

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Beatle-Philia

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Beatle-Philia

Why were the Beatles so good, so beloved? Why do they stand out from everyone else? You might think it was because they were super-talented: each of them was really good at what they did. I think the opposite is true: they were that good because they were not all that talented or accomplished. Am I being willfully paradoxical? Not so. Instrumentally, they were not virtuosos: George was not an ace guitarist like, say, Eric Clapton; John was not a great guitarist either; Paul was not a first-class bass player (compare John Entwhistle); Ringo was no Buddy Rich or Keith Moon. As singers they were nothing special: not like Roy Orbison or even Elvis Presley (not to mention Aretha Franklin or Whitney Houston). This meant that they couldn’t rely on outstanding performances, instrumentally and vocally. You were not amazed at their sheer musical brilliance. So, they had to be creative, different, new. They had to make up for their lack of musical talent (ability, education, expertise). They were good individually, but they were not as good as the overall result. They wrote great songs, they sang great harmonies, they made a great sound; but they were not individually anything remarkable—unlike Steve Winwood or Stevie Wonder or Prince or Jimi Hendrix. They were not a super-group like Cream (much the same is true of the Rolling Stones). George had to be innovative not a shredder, John had to be charismatic not vocally acrobatic, Paul had to be catchy and melodic, Ringo had to be musical and fit the song. It wasn’t about “chops”. So, the reason the Beatles were so good is that they were not that good at the level of musicianship; they had to rise above their limitations. If even one of them had been super-talented, capable of capturing the attention of audiences by sheer virtuosity, they would not have been so good as a band, because they could have relied in this talented member to carry them. They needed each other, despite their individual talents, because individually they were not natural stars. I doubt that any of them would have amounted to much if they had never met and pursued individual careers; they might have had some success separately, but there would never have been the level of Beatle-philia that actually occurred. Imagine if the four of them had Steve Winwood or Prince in the band: they could easily have depended on him to draw the crowds; they wouldn’t need to come up with something special.[1]

[1] Here is a similar question: would Bob Dylan have been so successful and beloved if he were a better singer and guitarist? If he could sing like Orbison and play like Clapton, would he have produced the body of work he did produce? I doubt it: his sheer musical talent would have carried him. Why are the Stones so successful? Because Mick can’t sing very well and Keith is not a great guitarist—so they had to come up with something. I also think that the Beatles and Stones could have had successful careers and not write their own material, though that certainly helped: they were initially great cover bands with a lot of success. I actually like their covers more than their originals, because they could select from among the many terrific songs already available (though I do like many of their originals).

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Dinosaur Evolution

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Dinosaur Evolution

I saw my first dinosaur skeleton in the late 1950s at the Natural History Museum in London on a family trip. I remember it as huge, alien, and dead; but undeniably impressive. I have seen many more such skeletons since. It has always seemed to me that a lot of evolution separates us from the dinosaurs: a great deal must have happened since then, distinguishing us from these big primitive lizards. We are far more advanced. But I have recently come to the conclusion that this is wrong: not much evolution has occurred since the dinosaurs. Evolution has been fairly static, not progressing much. We are under the illusion that we are far more advanced than they. To see this, consider the following thought experiment: suppose that dinosaurs still existed and have their own natural history museums, and suppose they contain the fossilized remnants of hominid skeletons, lovingly reconstructed. Wouldn’t the dinosaurs be under the impression that these long-dead creatures were not much to write home about? They are just a bunch of lifeless bones. Of course, they seem markedly unimpressive. It is only when you add flesh to the bones, and movement, and all the rest that the creature springs to life. A human skeleton is far from a full-blooded human being—and similarly for dinosaurs. This image problem has been somewhat rectified in recent years by animation: we get to see the dinosaurs as they originally lived and moved, more or less. They have come to life for us. And now it seems to me that the gap between us and them is not as large as I imagined. It now strikes me that rather little evolution has occurred between the time of the dinosaurs and our time; indeed, that this evolutionary time period has the character of a plateau. The animals of today have hardly advanced at all compared to the animals of the dinosaur’s epoch. In fact, we might even detect a decline in evolutionary development: the dinosaurs were really the peak of evolutionary success, from whose heights there has been a gradual (or abrupt) descent. They were the best animals that have ever lived, judged by biological standards—the greatest, the tops, numero uno.

Let’s recall some basic evolutionary facts. Life on Earth began around 3.5 billion years ago, soon after the planet was formed. It wasn’t until about 300 million years ago that dinosaurs appeared: it took an extremely long time before they evolved. When they did, they ruled the planet for over 200 million years. They had eyes, ears, noses, brains, locomotion, strength, resilience, social intelligence, and a whole suite of biological adaptations. At that time, they were the clear pinnacle of the evolutionary process. Then why did they go extinct? We know the answer: because of a giant meteor that happened to strike the earth and unleash mass extinction. If that had not happened, they very likely would still be here, only bigger and better, perhaps with language, art, science, and the rest. It would be a dinosaur planet. Humans would probably not even exist. The dinosaurs went extinct because of bad luck not bad design. They had good genes, but you can’t argue with a giant meteor landing on your house. There was nothing wrong with them adaptively; they were survivors par excellence. Now it has only been about 300 million years since they evolved—nowhere near as much time as it took for them to evolve. That is a short time to make major biological steps forward. If we consider the non-human animals now existing on the planet, we are not going to be much impressed with their edge over the dinosaurs; surely, if the dinosaurs came back, they would soon dominate the species that supplanted them (not counting us). Even the most brilliant of apes is not going to out-survive the dinosaurs. Later species are no match for reborn dinosaur species. You see what I mean about being the peak.

But what about us, you protest: aren’t we superior to the dinosaurs? Could they overrun us? The first point to make is that we are special: the other species now existing are not superior to dinosaurs. Evolution has not in general produced species superior to the dinosaurs; we are really a freak accident (what with language etc.). The trend has not been towards superior species. Second, we tend to exaggerate our uniqueness and ignore our vulnerabilities. Who knows how much longer we will last? What would happen if we lost our vaunted technologies? We are not so darn impressive “in the wild”. Third, our biology is basically the same as that of much more ancient species: we haven’t evolved any new adaptations that dramatically improve our survival chances—extra senses, impenetrable skin, total immunity to disease, etc. We are basically the same old body plan that has been around forever: eyes, legs, mouths, etc. There just hasn’t been enough time to develop radically new body plans, indestructible internal organs, high-speed brains. Face it, we are not that different from dinosaurs anatomically. We have cleverer brains, it is true, but that is no guarantee of survival superiority and might indeed be our downfall (a meteor made dinosaurs extinct, our own brains might make us extinct). In any case, we are hardly the zoological norm: the world is not full of recently evolved species that are streets ahead of the dinosaurs. One might be forgiven for supposing that since the dinosaurs nothing very interesting has happened zoologically. If anything, there has been a decline. That could certainly happen if the world becomes less hospitable to animal life, because of temperature changes, pollution, meteor bombardments, etc. There is no guarantee that species will keep improving and outshine their ancestors. What if the only creatures that can survive on planet earth are ants and termites?

The opinion I have come to, then, is that evolution has not been up to much lately. The same might be said of civilization. The ancient Greeks were the pinnacle of civilization; the dinosaurs were the pinnacle of evolution. The past was better than the present. More cautiously, we should not assume that the extinct animals whose skeletons we sometimes see are somehow less sophisticated biologically than current animals (including us). Nothing much has changed biologically since the time of the dinosaurs. It is an illusion to suppose otherwise.[1]

[1] It was watching a PBS documentary “Walking with Dinosaurs” that most immediately triggered these reflections. You get to see dinosaurs as they actually lived not as skeletons propped up in a museum. Their variety is also well-depicted. These are not lumbering clods or dim grass-munchers. They have sharp eyes, agile movements, and obvious intelligence. They are in no way inferior to the animals of today.

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This Boy

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This Boy

I have a personal relationship, a history, with the song “This Boy” by the Beatles. It was released in November 1963, when I was thirteen, as the B-side of “I Want to Hold Your Hand”. I heard it then. I recall the Beatles being interviewed on the BBC’s Tonight by Cliff Mitchelmore in their first flush of success. They were asked which of their songs was their favorite: John, Paul, and George all said “This Boy” with no hesitation; only Ringo made a different choice (I forget what but it was rockier). Clearly, the decision to put it on the B-side was motivated by its relative lack of market potential—it’s a slow ballad. Many Beatles fans don’t even know the song. It was written by John Lennon, though credited to Lennon-McCartney. It starts low and slow, building to a rousing, almost hysterical, middle eight, then reverting to the low and slow. If you asked me my favorite Beatles song of all time, I would say “This Boy”. It has a hypnotic simplicity, beautiful harmony, and coiled passion unsurpassed by later work. Fifty-seven years later, when I decided to take singing lessons, my ambition was to sing this song, especially that middle eight (“Till he’s seen you cry-y-y”). I had no expectation that I would achieve this ambition: it is high-pitched, powerful, and loud. Now, five years later, I sing it all the time, almost every day; and I am here to report that I nail it. It took me about three years to start to reach the pitch and power; now I don’t find it a stretch. The moral is obvious: practice, practice, practice. I often mention this song to people I meet (as when I met a woman the other day walking her dog when I was out skateboarding). If you don’t know the song, give it a listen—and try to sing it.[1]

[1] I was amazed to discover the other day that the now-famous middle eight was initially supposed to be a guitar solo, but that was changed during recording to what we have now—John Lennon at his raucous soulful best. It is surely one of the wonders of popular music.

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Seeing as Knowing

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Seeing as Knowing

Knowing may or may not be a type of seeing, but seeing is a type of knowing.[1] I mean this as an identity theory: seeing is knowing. Necessarily, if you see, you know, because seeing is in itself a type of knowing. The knowing isn’t something added to the seeing; it is already present in the seeing. We might speak of visual knowing—along with auditory knowing, tactile knowing, gustatory knowing, olfactory knowing. All the senses deliver knowledge just by acting as senses. Suppose I don’t know where my phone is and undertake a search for it. I see it lying on the bed. Then I know where it is. I don’t need to reason about what I’ve seen or supplement my seeing or validate it in some way: my visual sense has informed me about where my phone is. The OED defines “know” as “be aware of through observation, inquiry, or information” and “have knowledge or information concerning”. I am aware of where my phone is through observation; I am informed of its whereabouts. This knowledge will pass immediately into my memory, there to be stored as an item of information. My senses have functioned normally and successfully to disclose a piece of information concerning reality. They did nothing wrong. I will now remember where my phone is. When I see my phone, I thereby know where it is, because to see is to know. This is primitive sense-based knowledge possessed by adult humans, animals, and children. It isn’t that we first sense and then know, as a causal consequence, perhaps aided by reason; there is no epistemic gap. If we are interested in the seeing-knowing problem, the answer is not dualism but monism: to see just is to know. Seeing is not epistemically neutral, awaiting certification by other cognitive faculties (reason, intellect); it is in itself a form of knowledge.

Why might anyone doubt this piece of elementary common sense? One reason is the alleged connection between knowledge and belief. Knowledge requires belief, but I might not believe my senses, thus undermining knowledge. Suppose I am under the impression that my senses have been deceiving me lately, perhaps because a generally reliable authority has told me so. Recalling this, I start to doubt my senses—am I under the illusion that my phone is on the bed? I now don’t believe I have found my phone, even though I have. But knowledge requires belief, so I don’t have knowledge about the location of my phone after all. The trouble with this argument is that perceptual knowledge does not require this kind of belief: I can know without believing. Suppose I am informed that my erstwhile informant is in fact a liar and my senses have been functioning perfectly; then I will revert to believing I have found my phone. But my visual sense hasn’t changed at all: it has kept on feeding me information about the whereabouts of my phone. I have known the whole time where my phone is; I just didn’t believe this for a short period. I was aware the whole time of certain information; I just doubted it for a while. Thus, I possessed knowledge. Children and animals don’t engage in this kind of belief waffling; they simply know what their senses tell them. The senses convey knowledge of the environment no matter what you believe about them; they function successfully no matter what your opinion of their functioning might be. They don’t care what your opinion of them is; they do their job even if you doubt their veracity. To see is not to believe that you see, but to see. So, the senses deliver knowledge whether you believe they do or not. They are not deterred by your possibly low opinion of them: you don’t become blind by thinking you are, because your eyes are not influenced by your thoughts.

The second reason concerns skepticism. It is important to understand that the skeptic is not claiming that we don’t sense things; his claim is only that we don’t know that we do. The senses are fallible, because of the possibility of illusion and hallucination; but if they are veridical, they convey information and hence knowledge. This the skeptic accepts: if veridical, then knowledgeable. His contention is that we don’t have justified or certain belief that they are veridical. Hence, evil demons, brains in vats, and so on. The point I am making is not intended to combat the skeptic, except in so far as he claims that the senses don’t deliver a kind of knowledge—they do when functioning normally, whether we can know this or not. For all the skeptic says, the senses are continually producing knowledge, whether or not we can justifiably assert this proposition. For the possibility of perceptual knowing is not dependent on refuting the skeptic: we don’t need to prove that they actually convey knowledge, only that their output is knowledge if they are not functioning abnormally. It is in their nature to produce knowledge; knowledge is not something that gets added to them under suitable conditions. The skeptic has no proof that they don’t produce knowledge, since their doing so does not depend on our being able to prove that we have justified belief that they do. He may be able to prove that we have no such justified belief, but that doesn’t show that they don’t actually produce knowledge. Even if reason (intellect) can’t produce knowledge, that doesn’t show that perception can’t. It may be that rational thought can never generate real knowledge but that basic perceptual experience generates it all the time.  An outside observer, like God, may look down on us and think, “They are not equipped with the faculties to acquire justified belief about the universe, but they are able to form bits of perceptual knowledge and do so regularly”. Thus, there is no move from skepticism to the denial of perceptual knowledge as such (which is not the same as justified perceptual belief).

Let’s try to see the commonsense wood for the skeptical trees. When an animal uses its senses, which it does all the time, it picks up information about the perceived world. This information is aptly called knowledge. The senses are devices for acquiring knowledge of the environment; they evolved to perform this function. They don’t need to be interpreted or supplemented or processed in order to yield knowledge; they don’t need a separate faculty, typically called reason, to operate on them before knowledge comes into being. This kind of consciousness is a knowing consciousness, intrinsically and essentially. It needs no stamp of approval from a higher authority (as Descartes supposed). You don’t need God to convert the water of sensation into the wine of knowledge; nor do you need logical reasoning or scientific method. Perceptual sensation is alreadyknowledge. The concept of knowledge is not alien to it, or external, or adventitious. An animal that perceives is an animal that knows. We are such an animal (so were dinosaurs and multitudes of other species). There has been knowledge on planet Earth for millions and millions of years. It didn’t take philosophers to make knowledge possible. Knowledge is as old and basic as breathing and defecating. Knowledge must not be intellectualized, as if it is the property of only rational souls (whatever they may be). Knowledge is at least as ancient as consciousness, and both precede logical reasoning and reflection. Knowledge existed long before epistemology ever did.[2]

[1] I am influenced in what follows by the work of Michael Ayers. I skate over many contentious issues here in order to focus on the central point.

[2] I haven’t talked about what such primitive knowledge concerns. It isn’t hard to say: discrete, bounded, solid objects in space, moving about, in varying proximity to the organism’s body—precisely the things of relevance to the survival. In sensing things, the organism comes to know these kinds of facts about what is sensed. This forms the most basic kind of knowledge possessed by knowing beings. All later empirical knowledge is an extension of this basic kind (including the Cogito). We certainly don’t come to know sense-data first, still less the self.

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