Abstract
Experiences—visual, emotional, or otherwise—play a role in providing us with justification to believe claims about the world. Some accounts of how experiences provide justification emphasize the role of the experiences’ distinctive phenomenology, i.e. ‘what it is like’ to have the experience. Other accounts emphasize the justificatory role to the experiences’ etiology. A number of authors have used cases of cognitively penetrated visual experience to raise an epistemic challenge for theories of perceptual justification that emphasize the justificatory role of phenomenology rather than etiology. Proponents of the challenge argue that cognitively penetrated visual experiences can fail to provide the usual justification because they have improper etiologies. However, extant arguments for the challenge’s key claims are subject to formidable objections. In this paper, I present the challenge’s key claims, raise objections to previous attempts to establish them, and then offer a novel argument in support of the challenge. My argument relies on an analogy between cognitively penetrated visual and emotional experiences. I argue that some emotional experiences fail to provide the relevant justification because of their improper etiologies and conclude that analogous cognitively penetrated visual experiences fail to provide the relevant justification because of their etiologies, as well.
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Notes
For similar definitions, see Siegel (2012), MacPherson (2012), and Stokes (forthcoming). One could define cognitive penetration more narrowly, by adding a further condition sating that the causal penetrating process is semantically significant. See Pylyshyn (1999) for this addition and Stokes (forthcoming) for reasons to resist it. The arguments in the present paper are equally successful whether we include Pylyshyn’s semantic condition or not. In addition, several further points of clarification are in order. Cognitive penetration occurs only when the psychological penetrating state is not part of the penetrated system. Influence by one state within the visual system on another does not count as cognitive penetration; influence by, e.g., a belief state outside the visual system on a visual state can count as cognitive penetration, but only if the other conditions are met. Regarding condition (i): the stimuli impacting the two subjects’ sensory receptors must be qualitatively identical, but need not be numerically identical. Regarding condition (ii): The relevant differences of spatial attention do not include all differences in attention. That would exclude cases of cognitive penetration where the subject attends to different objects or properties because the process of cognitive penetration causes the experience to represent different objects and properties for the subject to attend to. The idea is to hold fixed where in the phenomenal space the subject attends. Regarding condition (iii): the subjects’ sensory organs must not be in different conditions due to anything other than the effects of the background states. For example, one does not get a case of cognitive penetration if conditions (i) and (ii) are satisfied, but only one of the subjects has a normally functioning visual cortex due to a brain tumor.
Skepticism aside, it should be uncontroversial that the etiology of a perceptual experience can play an indirect role in fixing the propositional and doxastic justification provided by an experience. An experience’s etiology helps fix its phenomenology and content, which in turn help fix the relevant perceptual justification. However, it is controversial whether two experiences identical in their content and phenomenology, but differing in their etiology as the result of cognitive penetration, can provide different justification. The latter issue is the focus of the present paper and the Epistemic Dependence thesis should be read as implying these qualifications.
I use Angry Looking Jack in the main text because it figures prominently in the published discussions to which I respond. Ekman (1972, 1993, 2007) has done extensive psychological field work documenting pan-cultural facial expressions of emotion (cf. Ekman and Friesen 1971; Ekman 1986). It is quite plausible that there are stereotypical angry facial expressions. However, the arguments work at least as well, and perhaps better, if we substitute the following case throughout the discussion.
Eye Exam Earl is at the optometrist taking an eye exam. Before taking the exam, Earl has the unjustified belief that the farthest left letter in the bottom row is a vowel. In fact it is a Q. But Earl’s unjustified background belief causes Earl to have an experience as of an O through the process of cognitive penetration.
The Eye Exam case has an even sharper phenomenal contrast between the penetrated and non-penetrated state. In addition, dogmatists have a more difficult time avoiding it by restricting their view to low-level contents, a strategy criticized in note 10.
Angry Looking Jack has featured frequently in recent discussions of cognitive penetration. Such examples may or may not be fictitious. However, there is experimental evidence that cognitive penetration of the sort described in Angry Looking Jack can occur. One of the clearest pieces of evidence comes from a series of experiments by Levin and Banaji (2006). In one of the experiments, participants were shown a gray-scale image of a racially ambiguous face on a computer screen. The face was labeled with either the word ‘white’ or the word ‘black’. The participants then matched the face to a shade of gray. Participants in the group shown images with the ‘white’ label matched the face to lighter shades of gray than did those in the group with the ‘black’ label. Levin and Banaji’s study provides evidence that cognitive states used to process linguistic data concerning the word ‘white’ or ‘black’ on the label can have an influence on the phenomenology of the participants’ visual experiences. Since the states used to process the linguistic data are presumably outside the visual system, the results cannot easily be explained as arising due to intra-systematic processes. And since the differences in the phenomenal character of the participants’ experiences pertained to shades of gray, it is implausible that the differences were due to shifts in stimuli, attention, or the condition of the participants’ sensory organs. For a thorough discussion of the evidence of cognitive penetration from this and related experiments, see MacPherson (2012). For discussion of evidence from experiments involving the role of background desires, see Stokes (2012). For responses to some of the central arguments for impenetrability in Fodor (1983), see Prinz (2006).
Proponents of the challenge include Markie (2005, 2006), Goldman (2008), (Siegel 2012, forthcoming), Lyons (2011), Jackson (2011), and McGrath (forthcoming-a, forthcoming-b). It should be noted that although published discussions of the challenge have so far focused primarily on cases of cognitive penetration, it is possible that similar verdicts apply in cases that do not restrict attention shifts (i.e. that concern etiologies where condition ii is not satisfied). For example, Lyons (2011) and Siegel (Siegel 2013a, b) both consider the restriction on attention not to be epistemically significant. Since nothing in my arguments requires broadening the focus to processes involving attention shifts, I work with the notion of cognitive penetration in the main text; however, my arguments could be developed to allow attention-shift cases as well.
Because the cognitive penetrability challenge raises questions about the nature of epistemic justification and the conditions under which it is provided, it is best not to prejudge the debate by offering precise accounts of propositional and doxastic justification. However, the rough ideas are as follows. S has propositional justification for p if and only if (and to the degree that) S has good epistemic reason to believe p. And S’s belief that p is doxastically justified if and only if S believes p for good epistemic reason.
Huemer’s phenomenal conservatism extends dogmatist principles to non-visual ‘seemings’ states. It should be noted that Pryor (2000, 2004) defends a more restricted form of dogmatism, one which applies only the ‘basically represented’ contents. Pryor’s restricted dogmatism does not entail verdicts (a) and (b) concerning Angry Looking Jack, since the contents in that case are not basically represented in Pryor’s sense. However, other counterexamples, such as Eye Exam, discussed in note 5, do pose a serious challenge to Pryor’s restricted form of dogmatism: the contents in that case are basic, and the verdicts are as plausible in that case as they are in Angry Looking Jack.
The new challenge from cognitive penetration has important connections to an older debate in psychology and the philosophy of science about the theory-ladenness of observation. One might argue for the importance of the new challenge from cognitive penetration by claiming that it breathes new life into the older debate about theory-ladenness in the philosophy of science. Alternatively, one might argue for the unimportance of the new challenge by claiming that it merely rehashes the older debate. However, neither response to the challenge is correct. It is more accurate to describe the recent challenge as raising a new debate in its own right. There are at least two important differences between the debates. First, the cognitive scientific aspect of the theory-ladenness debate was about the frequency with which cognitive penetration occurs, whereas the recent debate is not. For example, Jerry Fodor accepted that perception is cognitively penetrable—or in his terminology, unencapsulated—to at least a minimal degree; he writes, “The point of perception is the fixation of belief, and the fixation of belief is a conservative process—one that is sensitive, in a variety of ways, to what the perceiver already knows. Input analyses may be informationally encapsulated, but perception surely is not” (1983, p. 73, emphasis original). Against New Look psychologists such as Bruner and Goodman (1947), Fodor maintained that top-down influences are the exception rather than the rule. By contrast, the new challenge from cognitive penetration gets off the ground with only a few select cases of cognitive penetration. Since these cases are supposed to serve only as counterexamples to theories of perceptual justification, it is not important for the debate whether the examples occur frequently. In fact, to the extent that the views in question entail claims about merely possible cases of cognitive penetration, it is not even essential that the cases actually occur; though there is evidence that they do (see note 7). Second, the epistemic aspect of Fodor’s debate with the New Look psychologists and Harvard relativists such as Kuhn (1962) and Goodman (1978) concerned the objectivity of perception and its suitability as a foundation for scientific consensus and knowledge. For Fodor, “To get from a cognitivist interpretation of perception to any epistemologically interesting version of the conclusion that observation is theory dependent, you need not only the premise that perception is problem solving, but also the premise that perceptual problem solving has access to ALL (or, anyhow, arbitrarily much) of the background information at the perceiver's disposal” (1984, p. 35, italics added; capitalization original). Fodor focuses on providing evidence against the second premise above, the one that says that perceptual systems have access to arbitrarily much of the subject’s background information. The new challenge from cognitive penetration is compatible with Fodor’s denial of that extreme claim and is not focused primarily on the objectivity of science. Rather, the new challenge is concerned with specific verdicts concerning a subject’s justification in cases where these background top-down processes have an effect on perception, however often that is. By drawing attention to possible counterexamples to theories of perceptual justification, the new challenge also suggests epistemologically interesting claims related to theory-dependence that Fodor overlooks. In short, although the new challenge has roots in a historically important debate about the theory-ladenness of observation, the new challenge is orthogonal to the more contentious issues that were central to the older debate. To accept the key claims in the new challenge one need not be a relativist about confirmation in science and one need not think that cognition relentlessly shapes perceptual processing.
Markie’s examples feature penetration by a desire rather than an unjustified belief. But he would presumably support the verdicts as applied to Angry Looking Jack as well. In any case, his strategy of appealing to intuition is worth considering.
See Tucker (2010) for a response along these lines. Siegel (2012) and Markie (p.c. cited in Tucker 2010) both give arguments aimed at ruling out the claim that the intuitions concern lack of knowledge. I think the arguments are unsuccessful. The strategy in each case is to try to isolate the justification intuition by arguing that there is some defect in addition to the subject’s lack of knowledge, and then to claim that that defect pertains to justification. Although I won’t enter into details, a problem for both strategies is that there may be multiple defects which pertain to lack of knowledge without pertaining to justification. Both authors seem to assume that once they have identified a defect pertaining to knowledge, any other defects must pertain to other epistemic properties, such as justification. But this is not the case. A belief might fail to be knowledge for more than one reason, none of which pertains to a failure of justification.
See McGrath (forthcoming-a) for this suggestion.
There is an additional argument that establishing the key verdicts requires more than appeal to intuition. It is tempting to characterize the core intuition underlying the challenge as follows: subjects like Jill fail to get any justification from their experience for the penetrated content. As stated, the intuition denies Jill any defeasible, propositional justification for the claim that Jack is angry. However, it is implausible that Jill fails to get any defeasible, propositional justification from her penetrated experience for that claim. Consider the following claims: (1) It visually appears to me as if Jack is angry. (2) If it visually appears to me as if Jack is angry, then probably Jack is angry. (3) So, probably Jack is angry. Jill has propositional justification for (1) as the result of having her experience as of Jack’s being angry. Even if there is something defective about the experience or its etiology, Jill gets justification to believe that it appears to her as if Jack is angry. Jill also possesses justification for (2). Typical subjects possess extensive evidence of the reliability of their own visual experiences. If we suppose that Jill is a typical subject, she has strong positive evidence that her belief was reliably produced. Moreover, given that the case must be set up such that she lacks defeaters for any justification she receives from her experience for the claim that Jack is angry, she lacks undercutting defeating evidence against reliability in the particular case at issue. So, Jill has justification for (2). Finally, there is nothing suspicious about an inference or epistemic support relation from the conjunction of (1) and (2) to (3). The claims form a valid syllogism and an inference from (1) and (2) to (3) is reasonable. So, Jill gets some propositional justification for the claim that Jack is angry via her justification for (1) and (2). The above considerations suggest that we must be quite careful about the precise content of the intuitions that could be used to support the challenge; challengers who rely exclusively on such intuitions could be accused of identifying the content of the intuition more specifically than is credible. As a result, more than an appeal to intuition is needed to establish the key verdicts. The above considerations about a possible introspective route to justification in the case suggest that the relevant justification to focus on is non-introspective. Moreover, I should note that, in order to establish verdicts (a) and (b), one must assume that subjects in the relevant cases form their beliefs on the immediate basis of the experience in question, rather than via the route described in (1)–(3).
For example, Descartes, Hume, and Reid all employ the metaphor. Contemporary epistemologists do as well, including externalists such as Plantinga and Goldman.
Although some of my criticisms apply to the belief analogy argument regardless of which states serve as penetrators, I primarily target the argument as it applies to penetration by beliefs. I leave open whether the strategy is successful in cases of penetration by desire. If it is, then the emotion analogy argument should be read as complementing the belief analogy argument by offering additional support for the challenge’s key claims, especially applied to cases of penetration by belief.
One possible exception here might be putatively self-evident beliefs or claims. However, the beliefs at issue in the present discussion are not candidates for self-evidence beliefs or claims.
There is a school of thought dating back to the Stoics according to which emotions just are beliefs or judgments, or necessarily involve beliefs or judgments as components or precursors (Nussbaum 2001; Solomon 1976). On such a ‘judgmentalist’ view, one might deny that Sara bases her belief that she is in danger on her emotional experience on the grounds that a belief with that content just is or necessarily precedes the emotion. However, there are two problems with the claim that Sara could not base her belief that there is danger nearby on her emotional state. First, it is not clear that the content of the alleged emotion-judgment would be that there is danger nearby. Other plausible candidates exist. So even if Sara’s emotion did involve a belief with some content in the neighborhood, Sara could still base her belief that there is danger nearby on the emotional state. Second, and more importantly, judgmentalist views applied to the relevant fear states are false; such states do not require the proposed judgments. The main argument against judgmentalist accounts of fear appeals to recalcitrant emotions. Suppose that Hal is in a virtual reality machine in a lab. The machine makes it seem to him that he is standing atop a skyscraper. He knows that he is safe in the machine, yet he feels tremendous fear. It is implausible to attribute to Hal the contradictory judgments that he is in danger and that he is not in danger. For further elaboration of the argument from recalcitrant emotions, see Brady (2007, 2009), Roberts (2003), Tappolet (2006) and Deonna and Teroni (2012).
See the discussion in the previous note for evidence that such states need not involve beliefs.
Note that, as with the definition for visual experience, it may be epistemically irrelevant to include condition (ii). That is, it may not be consequential whether the subject’s spatial attention is unaffected by the penetrating process.
The example is drawn from Pizarro and Bloom (2003).
It is easier to establish that there are cases of cognitively penetrated emotion on a broader definition of ‘cognitive penetrability’ (or some related process) which omits condition (ii), discussed in note 4 and elsewhere above.
The James–Lange theory is controversial. In particular, it is controversial whether emotions consist only in perceptions of bodily states. It is worth clarifying that the above objection requires only that emotions at least partly involve perceptions (or sensations) of bodily states as distal stimuli.
For a review of the relevant literature, see Oatley et al. (2006), Chap. 5.
A further available response requires defining ‘cognitive penetrability’ more broadly, along the lines of Lyons (2011); see note 4. On such a definition, cognitive penetration is compatible with shifts in spatial attention and distal stimuli, so long as these shifts are caused by cognitive states, perhaps with some further restrictions. However, as explained above, I think that cases of cognitive penetration in the sense defined in the main text provide clearer cases of the relevant phenomenon and the shape of the challenge from cognitive penetrability, so I prefer to work with the narrower definition.
Of course fears are not the only epistemically assessable emotions.
Epistemic dependence can also hold between emotions and their motivational grounds. For a helpful discussion of the epistemic dependence relations between emotions and their cognitive and motivational grounds, see (Deonna and Teroni 2012, Chaps. 8, 9 and 10).
By using ‘the relevant claims’ I intend to exclude introspective justification for claims about one’s own beliefs. See Sect. 4.1 for related discussion.
For additional discussion of the view as applied to emotions, see Deonna and Teroni (2012), especially Chaps. 8 and 10.
This case may not strictly be a case of cognitive penetration, since it may involve shifts in Renee’s spacial attention and therefore fail condition (ii). For present purposes, the point is not important. What is important is that Renee can see the object as a rabbit for a subjective reason.
Note that subject’s reasons for seeing things as being a certain way need not be limited to their knowledge. For example, one could construct a similar example in which the subject knew that the animal was a rabbit, but choose to see it as a duck on the grounds that she wished it were a duck. Such grounds would arguably be epistemically defective.
The claim that emotional states have presentational phenomenology can be supported by introspection; one can be introspectively aware of the phenomenology of one’s fear state. It can also be supported by using neurological and biochemical evidence indicating that there are distinct autonomic nervous system (ANS) arousal patterns for various emotions, which correlate with distinct kinds of phenomenology. For a summary of the relevant data, see Oatley et al. (2006), Chap. 5. See also the data reported by Griffiths (1997, pp. 81–83) and Prinz (2004, pp. 69–71). Griffiths and Prinz also provide compelling evidence in response to experiments like in Schacter and Singer (1962), which some have interpreted as undermining the claim of distinct phenomenology.
One might resist the claim that emotional states have presentational phenomenology. To do so, one might offer a precise characterization of such phenomenology and argue that emotions lack the phenomenology so characterized. However, it is difficult to say precisely what presentational phenomenology is, and there is disagreement in the literature concerning how best to characterize it. A contrast is often drawn between perceptual and memory states (which have presentational phenomenology) and imagination and belief states (which do not). Perhaps targets of the challenge can answer it by defining ‘presentational phenomenology’ such that Xena’s fear does not have it. But these moves will have to be motivated and clarified. To get the cognitive penetrability challenge off the ground, it is enough that the cases of emotion under discussion have a sort of phenomenology that can plausibly be called presentational. For further discussion of the relevant phenomenology under various descriptions, see Heck (2000), Pryor (2000, 2004), Huemer (2001, 2007) and Chudnoff (2011). For additional arguments that affective states have the relevant phenomenology, see Johnston (2001).
For philosophical defenses of perceptual theories of emotion, see for example Clarke (1986), de Sousa (1987), Prinz (2004), Roberts (2003) and Tappolet (2006). Cf. Damasio (1994) and LeDoux (1996), for psychological views that fit well with what could be called a broadly perceptual theory of emotion.
See Griffiths (1997) for the most thorough development of this line of thought.
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Acknowledgments
Thanks to Guillaume Beaulac, Adam Bendorf, Brie Gertler, Carl Ginet, Stephen Humphreys-Mahaffey, Derk Pereboom, David Pizarro, Jesse Prinz, Nico Silins, Lu Teng, and Ru Ye for helpful feedback and discussion. Thanks also to audiences at the University of Western Ontario and Cornell University, where earlier versions of this paper were presented. Finally, thanks to the anonymous referees of this journal for helpful criticism.
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Vance, J. Emotion and the new epistemic challenge from cognitive penetrability. Philos Stud 169, 257–283 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-013-0181-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-013-0181-z