Philosophical Review

A Defense of the Given. by Evan Fales

Review by: Michael Huemer
The Philosophical Review, Vol. 108, No. 1 (Jan., 1999), pp. 128-130
Published by: Duke University Press on behalf of Philosophical Review
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BOOK REVIEWS
The Philosophical
Review,
Vol. 108, No. 1 (January 1999)
A DEFENSE OF THE GIVEN. By EvAN FALES. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and
Littlefield, 1996. Pp. xvi, 225.
The "doctrine of the given" that Fales defends holds that there are certain
experiences (including, especially, sensory experiences) such that we can
have justified beliefs about their "contents" that are not based on any
other beliefs, and that the rest of our justified empirical beliefs rest on
those "basic beliefs." The features of experience basic beliefs are about
are said to be "given." Fales holds that some basic beliefs are infallible,
having a kind of clarity that guarantees their truth to the believer (this
clarity being, itself, also given). In addition, some basic beliefs are fallible,
typically due to failure to devote full attention to one's experience.
Fales defines his task narrowly-he aims to defend the existence of the
given and of basic beliefs against objections, but not to explain how they
give rise to the rest of our knowledge. Furthermore, he intends to remain
neutral among the main opposing theories of perception (namely, direct
realism, the sense data theory, and the adverbial theory).
A priori, it seems unlikely that one could give a detailed defense of the
given while thus remaining neutral. This would require arguing that some-
thing is given while declining to specify even in the broadest terms what is
given. And indeed, Fales's neutrality is called into question early on, when
he explains that by the "content" of an experience, he means "the qual-
itative, sensuous character of the experience" (7). If this is so, then his
doctrine of the given holds that empirical knowledge rests on basic beliefs
about the qualitative character of experiences. This contradicts the direct
realist's view that empirical knowledge rests on basic beliefs about physical
objects.
Fales's promise of neutrality is again broken when he explains how the
given justifies basic beliefs. Although he denies that perceptual experience
can be analyzed in terms of beliefs, he says perceptual experiences have
"propositional structure" (this is somehow supposed to differ from saying
they are propositional). This is because perceptual experiences represent
regions of space and/or time as containing certain qualities-the region
is like the subject and the quality like the predicate of a proposition. To
form a basic belief, one first singles out some constituent of the proposi-
tionlike content of the experience (this step is included because the con-
tent of beliefs is typically much simpler than that of experiences). Then
one forms a belief that has the same content as that constituent. So one's
basic belief is justified by something like an inference from one's experi-
ence, while the experience itself does not require justification. Now, this
account is undoubtedly plausible. But Fales is surely mistaken to think it
128
BOOK REVIEWS
is neutral with respect to the major theories of perception. For the adver-
bialist holds that the basic beliefs are beliefs about ways of being appeared
to, such as "I am appeared to redly" (where the 'red' in 'redly' does not
refer to the physical quality of redness).' On Fales's account, the basic
beliefs, apparently, are about certain regions of space and time, to the
effect that they contain certain qualities-beliefs such as, "There is a red
patch there now." (It is true that this contradicts his earlier implication
that the basic beliefs would be about the contents of experience.)
Despite his broken promises, Fales's defense of the given is largely suc-
cessful. He confronts four main objections. First, there is an objection from
cases of paradoxical visual experiences, to which one is tempted to attrib-
ute contradictory contents (an example is the waterfall illusion, in which
an object appears to be moving, although, over time, its position in the
visual field does not change). The objection is that, if there is a given, it
must have contradictory properties in such cases. The objector's viewpoint
is puzzling (nor does Fales specify whom he is responding to here), since
the objector must presumably agree that there is some correct description
of what the experiences in question are like. Whatever the correct descrip-
tion is, then, the defender of the given can simply say that what is given is
that the experiences are like that. It is perhaps fortunate that Fales does
not notice this point, since the objection prompts him to an interesting
and plausible discussion of just what is the right way to describe these
experiences.
The second sort of objection argues that perceptual experience is always
affected by the perceiver's concepts, background beliefs, and/or "inter-
pretations." For example, when one perceives something as a duck, one's
experience is affected by an interpretation requiring the application of a
concept (this seeing-as is held to be a perceptual phenomenon; that is, the
way things actually look is affected by the concepts one has). For another
example, if a scientist sees something as an electron passing through a
cloud chamber, his experience is affected by his background beliefs. The
objector claims that all experience contains intellectual influences of these
sorts and therefore that there is no isolable given. Fales's (quite correct)
response is simple. The given is not defined as that which is causally un-
influenced by concepts or intellectual operations. The given is defined as
that of which we have noninferential awareness. Provided that one does
not arrive at beliefs about the contents of experience by conscious infer-
ence from other beliefs, these contents will count as "given." Thus, it does
not matter if the content of an experience is affected by the concepts one
has acquired or even by unconscious inferences-it remains the case that
1See Roderick Chisholm, Theory of Knowledge (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-
Hall, 1977), 26-30.
129
BOOK REVIEWS
one noninferentially knows the experience to have that content (the point
could also be rephrased in a way more congenial to direct realism).
Third, Fales considers an epistemological objection due to Laurence
BonJour.2 Either sensory experience is propositional, or it is not. If it is
propositional, says
Bonjour,
then it is appropriate to ask for a justification
for it. Therefore, the appeal to sensory experience will not end the regress
of justification that motivates foundationalism. But if experience is not
propositional, then it cannot serve to
justify
something that is propositional
(such as a belief). Either way, sensory experience can't do what the foun-
dationalist needs. Fales claims to escape this dilemma by showing, as dis-
cussed earlier, how a nonpropositional state can
justify
a belief. However,
besides the obscurity in Fales's distinction between a state's being proposi-
tional and its having propositional or propositionlike structure, it is clear that
Bonjour meant the first horn of his dilemma to apply to any theory that
makes sensory experiences sufficiently like propositional attitudes that they
can be accurate or inaccurate-for,
Bonjour
argues, as long as an experi-
ence can be accurate or inaccurate, we need a reason for thinking it is
accurate before we can justifiably form beliefs on the basis of it.3
More plausibly, Fales could claim to escape
Bonjour's
objection using
his notion of the clarity of primary beliefs which guarantees their truth.
This may seem like begging the question, but in fact it is
Bonjour
who
begs the question by asserting without argument that, as long as a repre-
sentation "can" be accurate or inaccurate in the sense that it is not a cat-
egory error to speak of it as accurate or inaccurate, the representation needs
justification. This scarcely differs from asserting the negation of founda-
tionalism.
Finally, Fales briefly mentions the objection that foundationalism leads
to skepticism (Michael Williams, for example, argues that no adequate way
can be found of deriving most of our common sense beliefs from any
plausible candidates for the given).' Rather than showing how to avoid the
threat of skepticism, Fales replies that the objection, even if true, does not
refute foundationalism and that the objector is "begging the question
against skepticism." Fales does not elaborate much, and those epistemol-
ogists who see skepticism as a reductio ad absurdum of any theory of knowl-
edge that has it as a consequence will remain unconvinced.
MICHAEL HUEMER
2BonJour, The Structure of Empirical Knozvledge (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1985), chap. 4.
3BonJour, 77-78.
4Williams,
Groundless Belief (Oxford: Blackwell, 1977).
130