1)
Beliefs which are “constructions or projections from [sensory]
stimulations” (Quine’s position).
and
2)
Beliefs about the world.
The
question is: How do we get from 1) to 2)? Or:
How
do we get from sensory stimulations - which are (indeed) caused by
the world - to truths about the world (or representations which are
true about the world)?
This
is the ancient sceptical question. Indeed this was the
question of epistemology (at least since Descartes).
Another
way of putting this is in terms of what we know. On Quine’s
account, all we know about is are sensory stimulations and what we
assert in response to them. We don't know anything about the world itself.
Or, as Stroud puts it, from this
“we
would not in addition have independent access to the world they are
about on the basis of which we could determine whether they are
true”.
If
what Stroud is saying is correct (or if what Quine is saying is
incorrect), then we can't even say that sensory stimulations - and
the causally resultant assertions - are “about the world” if they
aren't true of the world and don't give us knowledge of the world.
Are
beliefs and assertions about our own and other people’s beliefs and
assertions and not directly (or even directly) about the world? These
beliefs and assertions (or Quine’s ‘projections’)
“could
not be seen as a source of independent information about the world
against which their own truth or the truth of the earlier beliefs
could be checked”.
This
is as strong a statement of the possibility of scepticism in
epistemology as you could hear from a sceptic himself. We can compare
beliefs (or assertions, projections, or stimulations) against
beliefs; though we can't compare any of these with the world itself. Donald
Davidson would even say that we can't compare beliefs, etc. with
sensory stimulations because there are no belief-free sensory
stimulations “which could count as evidence”.
All
this can be (partly) boiled down - or is analogous - to Bishop Berkeley's
well-known statement that an ‘idea’ (or a representation or
belief) can only be like another belief (or representation or belief)
and not like what it's an idea of (or representation of, or belief
about) in the world. Stroud, then, is referring to the traditional
epistemological problem of “bridging the gap between sense data and
bodies” (Quine, quoted in Stroud). Whereas traditional
epistemologists saw this as a problem, the logical positivists saw it
is a “pseudo-problem”. Or, as Quine put it, this move between
sense-data (or Quine’s “sensory stimulations”) and bodies is
“real but wrongly viewed” (quoted in Stroud).
In
terms of this (logical?) gap between “data and bodies”, Quine
neither sees it as a pseudo-problem nor sees it, as Kant did,
as the greatest failure of philosophy. Quine’s
“positive
account does not try to show how we rule out the possibility that the
world is completely different in general from the way our sensory
impacts and our internal makeup lead us to think of it”.
If
Quine did think this, then we could say that he may as well believe
that the problem of the external world (or even its existence) is a
pseudo-problem if he doesn’t “try to show how we rule out the
possibility” that the world may be different to what we think it's
like. Perhaps there's a logical gap between data (or evidence) and
the world. If there is, then why didn’t Quine think such problems
are pseudo-problems as the logical positivists did? Or as Stroud puts
the logical positivist (or ‘verificationist’) position:
“The
traditional epistemological question of the reality of the external
world and our knowledge of it was for Carnap and Schlick and other
verificationists a meaningless pseudo-question; no answer to it was
empirically confirmable or disconfirmable.”
We
can’t get between our evidence (or data) to get directly to - or at
- the world in order to match the evidence (or data) with the world.
Hence the logical gap. Scientists, at least the majority of them, had
always accepted that they must rely on evidence or sense-data (or
‘phenomena’ in the case of Kantian scientists like Einstein and
Mach in the early 20th century). And because science had the last
(and first?) word on the world or nature, if scientists happily
accepted the importance of sense-data (or Carnap’s “cross-sections
of experience”) when it came to world-talk, then the logical
positivists did so too. As a consequence of this “deference”
(Quine’s term) to science, Stroud comments that
“[f]or
Carnap we must distinguish a philosophical (pseudo) employment of a
form of words from an ordinary or scientific employment of the same
words”.
We
mustn't talk about the world or reality (its nature or existence) in
the way the sceptics or epistemologists do. Instead we must speak as
scientists (or even laypersons) speak. If we take the former
option, we'll basically be talking rubbish.
In
terms of Quine’s position again. What’s the point of accepting
the possibility that the “world [could be] completely different”
if Quine doesn't offer us a way out of this problem? Again, if the
gap is logical, then he must surely see the problem as a
pseudo-problem. However, if all we have are “sensory
impacts” and a largely given “internal makeup”, then we must
surely see why Quine took the (pragmatic?) position that he did take.
Despite
Davidson’s criticisms of Quine’s emphasis (or very position) on
sensory stimulations, Stroud writes that Quine’s position isn't
like that of the sense-data theorists (or British Empiricists or the
later phenomenalists). What Quine doesn't do, even with his sensory
stimulations, is try
“to
isolate a domain of pure sensory data evidentially or epistemically
prior to the knowledge of nature that is to be explained”
(Stroud).
So
perhaps Quine’s position was midway between sense-data theorists’
atomism and Davidson’s holism:
- Sense-data which are untouched by belief and theory –→ the world. (The sense-data theorists' position.)
- Beliefs which are (clearly) touched by (other) beliefs and theory –→ world. (Davidson’s position.)
And
the ‘happy medium’:
iii)
Sensory stimulations which are touched by belief and theory but which
are nevertheless taken to ground (future) beliefs and theories.
(Quine’s position?)
Stroud’s
perspective seems to depend on accepting a very controversial theory
of metaphysically-realist truth. (Putnam has said that, in terms of
scientific truth, Quine is himself a metaphysical realist who, for
example, accepts the principle of bivalence for scientific
statements.)
Stroud
puts this metaphysically-realist position by again questioning
Quine's exclusive reliance on sensory stimulations and the resultant
“projections” or “posits” we make “about the world”
because of sensory stimulations. He asks Quine a simple
question:
“[How
do the] subject’s ‘projections’ or ‘posits’ turn out to be
correct, and not just a question about how he comes to make them
[?]...”
If
the “world is well lost” (Richard Rorty’s phrase), or we don't have
direct access to the world, then how do we know which projections or
posits are correct and which are incorrect without the world telling
us? (Rorty and Davidson would say that the world can't tell us
anything, not even metaphorically or indirectly.) How does the
Quinian decide which posits or projections are correct and which ones
are incorrect? Are these decisions made exclusively on pragmatic or
instrumentalist lines? (Quine, I think, wasn't an instrumentalist
probably because most scientists don't take an instrumentalist
position on scientific entities – save on “theoretical
entities”.)
However,
Quinians can't only be concerned with “how he comes to make”
these projections or posits because some people come to make
projections or posits about goblins or the influence of ley
lines. So there's more to the Quinian story than (mere) projections
and posits. That something extra is causality or causation, according
to Stroud. Stroud puts this rather simple causal approach to
knowledge this way. He says that we
“would
see that the world around [the investigator or epistemologist] is
generally speaking exactly the way he says it is and that its being
that way is partly responsible for his saying and believing what he
does about it”.
This
is certainly largely Davidson’s position and also the reason why he
believes that most of our beliefs are mainly true. We wouldn't say or
believe what we do about the world if the world wasn't responsible
for what we say and believe about it. That relation (or connection)
between belief and the world is largely accounted for in terms of
causation. (However, according to Davidson, “causation does not
come under a description” and it's not in itself “explanatory”.
Can this be tied to what has just been said?) This causal (for want
of a better word) position may seem simple and even a little naïve.
Stroud writes that
“[m]any
philosophers nowadays would hold that that is enough for knowledge:
the subject believes that p, he is right, and it is no
accident that he is right”.
Jeff
believes that p because the world is as he says it is. The
world causes him to believe or say that p in a
causal-kind-of-a-way. Indeed this almost has the appearance of
being some kind of isomorphic relation between the world and what we
say or believe about it. It's no surprise, then, that Stroud concludes by saying
that the “adequacy of any such 'causal' account of knowledge is
still questionable at best”.
Because
of everything that's just been said about Stroud’s account (i.e.,
that we essentially loose the world on Quine’s alternative), then
we must also accept “that countless 'theories' could be 'projected'
from the sensory impacts we receive”. That's no surprise because
Quine admitted this himself. As he's well known for having said the following: All
theory is underdetermined by the sensory evidence. (That's also
part of the story of ontological relativity, the indeterminacy of
meaning and the inscrutability of reference.) That's why we must
employ ‘pragmatic’ requirements and judgements when it come to
theory-choice. Stroud puts this less positively. He says that because
of this theory-pluralism (or theory-liberalism),
“if
we do happen to accept one such 'theory' it could not be because of
any objectively discoverable superiority it enjoys over it
competitors”.
The
theory we choose won't be a truer account of the world. It won't give
us more of the world (so to speak): it will only be pragmatically or
instrumentally superior (to us) than the other theories. It won't be
truer or even more correct. It won't be chosen because something has
been, as Stroud puts it, “objectively discovered” which places it
in a superior position in terms of truth rather than (mere) pragmatic
utility (or whatever). However, according to Stroud, Quine did accept
an objective component to his alternative position. But that
objective component is only the “meager [sensory] data” which
isn't itself the world (as well as not really data or evidence on
Davidson’s position). Even this pseudo-objective component doesn't
amount to much because this same objective data (or evidence) can be
used to construct many competing theories.
Reference
Stroud,
Barry, 'The
Significance of Naturalised Epistemology' (1981)
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