| Infallible Foundations and Perceptual Beliefs, by Anthony Peter Iannini, 1999 |
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Essay Overview: An brief essay that attempts to show how some beliefs, such as those about perceptions of pain and color, could not possibly be false in any situation..
The question at hand is whether or not beliefs about basic perceptions, such as those concerning pain and color, can be, for a rational individual, infallible— which is defined as the inability to be false. I will attempt to defend the following proposition in the context of some common counter-examples:
For all basic perceptions, if S rationally1 believes that S is perceiving a basic perception, then S actually is perceiving a basic perception, and, if S is rationally perceiving a basic perception, the S must also believe that S is perceiving a basic perception.
A basic perception is any perception that does not involve more than direct and immediate sensory awareness, such as perceptions of pain and color.
Keith Lehrer uses the following example to demonstrate that the perception of pain is capable of being fallible:
Imagine a very enlightened man goes to his doctor and is inclined to believe what the doctor says even when her medical deliverance is somewhat preposterous. The doctor tells the man that it is not surprising that his sensation is sometimes one of pain and sometimes one of itches because itches are really pains.
All itches, are pains, though some are very mild...From that moment on, he never doubts that itches are pains, and, though they feel different, he firmly believes that he is in pain, even if only very slightly so, whenever he has the slightest itch...Thus, his beliefs that he is in pain are often erroneous and are by no means infallible.2
I find two flaws in the above argument. Firstly, if a linguist came to me and explicated that I was using the word “pain” in the wrong way, and that any minor physical discomfort should be called pain, then I could also possibly call an itch pain, because an itch, by definition, implies a certain kind of physical discomfort.
Similarly, when the man in the above illustration scratches his itch, he is relieving his physical discomfort. The point is not that the man is blatantly wrong about his belief that he is in pain, but that his definition of pain has been rationally expanded to include something that is normally not encompassed by the definition of pain.
To clarify this point, imagine that you are out on safari with a world-renowned mammalian taxonomist. Upon seeing a leopard and a tiger, the taxonomist tells you that, although leopards are different than tigers, all leopards are really a form of tiger. Not being an expert, you now believe, based on expert clarification, that all leopards, though different, are really tigers.
The point is that both the itch and the leopard are still seen as different than the broader categories of definition that have now encompassed them. Because these entities— itching and pain, leopards and tigers— are similar enough to be classified as sub-categories of one another, one who adopts the expert understanding of terms seems to be perfectly justified in doing so in the context of being told by someone who is qualified.
Secondly, Lehrer’s example does not show how someone can have no perception of physical discomfort and believe that he is in pain, because an itch is some form of minor physical discomfort. One could even argue that some itching, like that brought on by toxins in certain chemicals or plants could be severe enough to be called pain, even under the “non-expert” definition of the word.
If, however, the example provided by Lehrer was explicitly absurd, such as in a case where the doctor tells the man that every time he tastes something sweet he is in pain, then we could say that belief about pain is, in fact, fallible. For a rational subject who understands the concept of pain, correlating the notions of “sweetness” and “pain” seems implausible.
Another example that Lehrer uses to try and show how belief about a basic perception can be fallible is that of an advanced neurological device that can measure brain states. The example proceeds as follows:
...imagine that we have reached a level of neurological understanding beyond the present and have established that a person experiences a certain sensation when and only when in a certain brainstate, call it state 1433. Let us imagine that the sensation is a visual one, for example, that sort of visual experience that a normal person has when confronted with red objects in daylight. We may call this a sensation of red.
Moreover, suppose we give this person a drug which will make him truthful in answering questions. Now imagine we give a person such a drug, he reports a sensation of red, and we are able to observe that he is not in brain state 143. On the basis of the evidence that he is drugged, we conclude that he believes what he says.
On the basis of the neurological evidence that he is not in brain state 143, we conclude that he is not having a sensation of red...If it is logically possible and involves no contradiction in conception, then it is logically possible that the person in question believes that he has a sensation of red when he does not have it.4
In the last sentence of the above brain state 143 example, Lehrer writes, “If it is logically possible and involves no contradiction in conception, then...” My claim is that it is not logically possible for someone to both have a basic perception and believe that they are not having such a basic perception, just is as it is not logically possible for something to be and not be at the same time.
My argument rests on the idea that having a basic perception entails belief, and that having a belief (in the context of a basic perception) entails actually having a basic perception. In other words, it is not logically possible for a rational subject to have one without the other. To prove this, I will look at two situations.
I. The impossibility of rationally being in pain and not believing it. Let’s suppose that Joe has broken his leg, has received treatment, and still remains in a fair amount of pain. While lying in his hospital bed, Joe wishes to distract himself. He turns on television and begins to watch an intensely interesting documentary about epistemology.
His mind distracted, he no longer believes that he is in pain because without the conscious, clearly available, in front of his active mind belief that he is in pain, the pain goes away. But, as happens a few times a day, a nurse comes into the room and asks Joe how his leg feels. As soon as his mind returns to the condition of his injured limb, he is again in pain. Of course, I am not asserting that the injury itself is gone while Joe’s mind is distracted, but rather, that the current belief is gone. And, as the removal of current belief also removes current pain, the two notions must be intimately bound.
A possible objection to this argument would be that Joe, though his mind is distracted, is never really free from the pain while watching the documentary. It could be conceded, by this objector, that the pain may be somewhat relieved, but it can not go away entirely. I think that this is a matter of degree, and it could be shown that if an injury or discomfort causes a low enough level of pain, then even a subtle distraction could essentially remove the pain.
Other potential examples could be imagined in which the distraction level is higher than the epistemology documentary that distracts Joe while in the hospital. These “more distracting situations” could cause a proportionally higher level of distraction, and therefore, a higher level of pain relief.
Any number of extraordinary examples could be imagined, such as Joe being presented with a harem of beautiful woman, or Joe learning that he has won ten million dollars. I would argue that both of these situations certainly have the potential to distract Joe’s belief that he is in pain, and hence, remove his current perception of that pain.
Another objection that has been raised in response to this example is that of unnoticed pain. My reply to this objection is that unnoticed pain is the same as the absence of pain, because the only reason we take pain killers, such as aspirin, is to reduce our perception of pain. Essentially, one can not have pain, and not have pain at the same time, as this is a logical contradiction. If the reference is to physical injury
II. The impossibility of rationally believing that one is in pain and not being in pain. Let’s suppose that Joe is completely healed and out with a friend. They attend a show where the main act is a hypnotist. The hypnotist asks for a volunteer, and Joe is chosen as the lucky assistant. After a few minutes of the hypnotist asserting just how relaxed and sleepy he is, Joe enters a deep hypnotic trance.
The hypnotist then tells Joe that when he wakes up, he will have a mild headache, one that will worsen and worsen, until the end of the show, when the headache will suddenly disappear.
After waking, Joe goes to his seat, unaware of the hypnotist’s instructions. Within minutes, Joe begins to squint and rub his head. Within a few more minutes, Joe puts his head down on the table and begins moaning in agony. Joe obviously believes that he is in pain.
The subtle point is that Joe is experiencing physical discomfort, whether or not its source is mental or physical. In other words, he is in physical discomfort, or as we would commonly say, he is in pain. And, as the stage curtains close, Joe lifts his head and wonders where the pain, and his belief that he is in pain, disappeared to.
Though there is no physical source of the pain in the above example, there was a strong belief that there was a physical source of pain, which led to the actual perception of pain. Psychological disorders, known as Somatoform disorders, are instances in which a person experiences bodily ailments in the absence of an physical disease or injury that could possibly cause them.5 A number of such disorders are known to exist, such as traumatic blindness and glove anesthesia.
Traumatic blindness occurs when someone is exposed to a horrific experience that causes them to go physically blind. Glove anesthesia is a condition in which a person experiences no sensation in the hand but continued sensation in the rest of the arm.
Nerves, however, are so connected in both the arm and the hand, that this condition is defined medically as physically impossible6. These empirical examples support the claim that belief can actually be the source of basic perceptions— such as pain, which has been discussed here at length.
These examples, which have concentrated on the basic perception and belief of pain, can be extended to other basic perceptual experiences such as those involved in color and sound. If the connection between belief and perception is as strong as I have asserted, then there is a basis for epistemological foundationalism, at least in the area of rationally arrived at perceptual beliefs.
Whether or not certainty about our own basic perceptual beliefs is the beginning of an extensive epistemological theory that can make the leap to the external world, or whether the foundation ends where it begins, is a topic beyond the scope of this article— though it does seem a good place to begin an examination of the more optimistic of the two aforementioned possibilities.
Endnotes:
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