Epistemological Disjunctivism and the Random Demon Hypothesis

Epistemological disjunctivists make two strong claims about perceptual experience's epistemic value: (1) experience guarantees the knowledgeable character of perceptual beliefs; (2) experience's epistemic value is "reflectively accessible". In this paper I develop a form of disjunctivism grounded in a presentational view of experience, on which the epistemic benefits of experience consist in the way perception presents the subject with aspects of her environment. I show that presentational disjunctivism has both dialectical and philosophically fundamental advantages over more traditional expositions. Dialectically, presentational disjunctivism resolves a puzzle disjunctivists face in their posture vis-à-vis skeptical scenarios. More systematically, presentational disjunctivism provides an especially compelling view of disjunctivism as an internalist view of perceptual consciousness by explaining the way perceptual presence manifests the subject's rationality in a distinct way.

This is a preprint of an article accepted for publication in Kriterion. The aim of this paper is two-fold: first, it is intended to articulate theses that are often assessed independently, thus showing that a strong version of epistemological disjunctivism about perceptual knowledge implies a transformative conception of rationality. This entails that individuals in skeptical scenarioscould notentertain rational thoughts about their environment, for they would fail to have perceptual states. The secondary aim is to show that this consequence is not a sufficient reason to abandon the variety of disjunctivism presented. The argument for this claim depends on the assessment of rationality attributions to subjects in plausible cases of illusion and some clinical cases of hallucination. Keywords: skeptical scenarios, disjunctivism, conceptualism, rationality, hallucination, illusion

Duncan Pritchard's recent book (Pritchard 2012) provides a lucid articulation and defence of epistemological disjunctivism (ED). He offers a characteristically clear formulation of the view:

Journal of Consciousness Studies

Along with what J. McDowell has called the disjunctive conception of experience (DCE), and against a venerable tradition, the veridical experience that P and the subjectively indistinguishable hallucination that P are not type-identical mental states. According to McDowell, a powerful motivation for DCE is that it makes available the sole internalistically acceptable way out of a sceptical argument targeting the possibility of perceptual knowledge. In this paper I state in explicit terms the sceptical argument McDowell worries about, and show that DCE has not the epistemological merits that McDowell ascribes to it. To begin with, I join a series of commentators in arguing that the way out of the sceptical argument made available by DCE is not internalistically acceptable, and so argue that it is not a way out that an internalist about epistemic justification would have any special reason to prefer to a parallel externalist way out that does not commit to DCE. Secondly, I show that the internalist can resist the sceptical argument by denying a different premise of it that McDowell takes for granted. I conclude by maintaining that McDowell's epistemological motivation for DCE is undercut.

According to epistemological disjunctivism (ED), ordinary perceptual experience ensures an opportunity for perceptual knowledge. In recent years, two distinct models of this idea have been developed. For Duncan Pritchard (2012, 2015), perception provides distinctly powerful reasons for belief. By contrast, Clayton Littlejohn (2016, 2017, 2018) and Alan Millar (2010, 2011) argue for a version of ED in terms of a "knowledge first" program, on which perception directly provides knowledge, without relying on antecedent reasons or justification. Specifically, both Littlejohn and Millar argue that "reasons first" ED faces a problematic regress. In this paper I defend "reasons first" ED by arguing that experience provides a type of reason that escapes the regress. I also argue that reasons are a fundamental aspect of ED, especially in its anti-skeptical stance.

has recently defended a view he calls ‗epistemological disjunctivism', largely inspired by John McDowell. I argue that Pritchard is right to associate the view with McDowell, and that McDowell's ‗inference-blocking' argument against the sceptic succeeds only if epistemological disjunctivism is accepted. However, Pritchard also

Epistemological disjunctivism says that one can know that p on the rational basis of one's seeing that p. The basis problem for disjunctivism says that that can't be since seeing that p entails knowing that p on account of simply being the way in which one knows that p. In defense of their view disjunctivists have rejected the idea that seeing that p is just a way of knowing that p (the SwK thesis). That manoeuvre is familiar. In this paper I explore the prospects for rejecting instead the thought that if the SwK thesis is true then seeing that p can't be one's rational basis for perceptual knowledge. I explore two strategies. The first situates disjunctivism within the context of a 'knowledge-first' approach that seeks to reverse the traditional understanding of the relationship between perceptual knowledge and justification (or rational support). But I argue that a more interesting strategy situates disjunctivism within a context that accepts a more nuanced understanding of perceptual beliefs. The proposal that I introduce reimagines disjunctivism in light of a bifurcated conception of perceptual knowledge that would see it cleaved along two dimensions. On the picture that results perceptual knowledge at the judgemental level is rationally supported by perceptual knowledge at the merely functional or 'animal' level. This supports a form of disjunctivism that I think is currently off the radar: one that's consistent both with the SwK thesis and a commitment to a traditional reductive account of perceptual knowledge.

Disputatio