W I L L I A M S.

B O A R D M A N

THE RELATIVITY OF PERCEPTUAL KNOWLEDGE

ABSTRACT. Since the most promising path to a solution to the problem of skepticism
regarding perceptual knowledge seems to rest on a sharp distinction between perceiving
and inferring, I begin by clarifying and defending that distinction. Next, I discuss the
chief obstacle to success by this path, ":he difficulty in making the required distinction
between merely logical possibilities that one is mistaken and the 'real' (Austin) or
'relevant' (Dretske) possibilities which would exclude knowledge. I argue that this distinc-
tion cannot be drawn in the ways Austin and Dretske suggest without begging the
questions at issue. Finally, I sketch and defend a more radical way of identifying 'relevant'
possibilities that is inspired by Austin's controversial suggestion of a paraIlel between
saying 'I know' and saying ~I promise': a claim of knowledge of some particular matter
is relative to a context in which questions about the matter have been raised.

To set the stage for my discussion, I will rehearse and clarify a well-
known dispute between A. J. Ayer and J. L. Austin concerning whether
perceptual judgments are inferences. Both in his Sense and Sensibilia 1
and in his 'Other Minds', 2 Austin carefully distinguishes recognizing
that p from inferring that p. For the purpose of comparing his position
with Ayer's, we might put his basic claim in this way: given the way
words such as 'recognize' and 'infer' are used outside philosophical
discussions, one clearly distinguishes instances of recognizing from in-
stances of inferring. Yet Ayer does not dispute that; rather, he replies
that while non-philosophers do make a sharp distinction between the
two, it is arbitrary for philosophical purposes. 3 Claims based upon one's
having recognized something are sufficiently like claims based upon
one's having inferred, Ayer supposes, that it is useful to treat then: as
instances of a common category. So the issue is not whether the distinc-
tion is recognized outside philosophical circles, but whether it is a
defensible and useful one to make. Clearly, Austin insists upon the
distinction because he supposes that failing to make it will promote
philosophical confusion; indeed, he argues that one traditional problem
of skepticism is largely due to this confusion. 4 In his 'Other Minds',
Austin tries to suggest how recognizing differs from inferring by show-

Synthese 94: i45-169, 1993.

© 1993 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
146 WILLIAM S. BOARDMAN

ing how the sorts of questions or challenges brought to bear differ

between the two sorts of claim: 5 for inferences, one wants a rehearsal
of the pieces of evidence and an account of their connections to the
judgment; for perceptual claims of recognition, one explores whether
the observer had the opportunity to see what he claimed to have seen,
whether he had acquired the expertise to recognize the sort of thing he
claimed to have seen, and whether the circumstances were free of
evident distraction and defect. But his readers' appreciation of these
things depends upon their having already granted that the distinction
is not arbitrary: since Austin expects us to recognize that the distinction
is justifiable, he does not defend it explicitly. After we have compared
the two sorts of claim, we will examine a defense of the distinction
which accords with Austin's discussion.
When we turn to an examination of claims based upon inference and
ones made as perceptual judgments of recognition, we discover a
number of important similarities which must be addressed by any ac-
count which insists nevertheless upon the importance of distinguishing
between them.

(1) When we explain our perceptual mistakes, we often do so in a way

which makes what we did look like an inference. For we like to articu-
late characters in c o m m o n between what we (mistakenly) thought we
saw and what we did (in fact) see which led us to mistake one for the
other. And that makes it appear that we reached our (mistaken) judg-
ment through a consideration of those common features.

(2) When we explain how we, unlike others present, have been able
to see what we did see, we again talk about our judgment as though it
were a species of inference. For we point to the one or several character-
istics which enabled us to see what we saw.

(3) In general, for any perceptual judgment which one makes, there is
an inference which might have been made in those circumstances and
which 'mimics' or 'emulates' the perceptual judgment. Because of this,
if I recognize something which you don't, I may point out characteristics
which will enable you to infer that what I claim is true. This fact about
perceptual judgments is what enables a seasoned veteran to teach a
beginner to recognize what he can recognize. Imagine teaching a child
to recognize oak trees: one will first point out the features characteristic
 RELATIVITY OF PERCEPTUAL KNOWLEDGE 147

of oaks - the patterns of their leaves, the way they branch, features of
their bark, their usual habitat - in short, the sorts of things from which
one's pupil may infer that he is seeing an oak. Eventually from such
training the pupil may learn to recognize certain trees as oaks. So a
perceptual judgment looks like a very rapid, unexpressed inference. In
addition, gaining new information can expand one's ability to recognize
or see things, just as it can similarly expand the number of inferences
one can make.

(4) One's claims about what he sees often incorporate non-perceptual

beliefs or things he takes for granted, just as do his inferences. As
Dretske has shown, 6 if you ask me whether the water you put on the
stove is boiling, I may be able to see that it is even though I cannot
see that it is water which is boiling: I take it for granted that the stuff
in the pot is water. And if I believe that it is my car which I was seeing
through the window, I can properly claim to have seen a red-haired
man stem my car. Because it is clear that at least part of such a
perceptual judgment requires an inference (an act of theft presenting
no unique visual patterns), it is tempting to suppose that the entire
judgment must consist of inferences.

(5) As an empirical matter of (causal) fact, whenever one recognizes

X as a Y or this as an X, he must be enabled to do so in virtue of
certain visible or otherwise evident features of the thing he sees or
perceives. Even when the observer cannot identify those features which
enabled him to perceive what he has perceived, nevertheless there
must have been evident features which were causally necessary for his
perceptual judgment. If I really do recognize my father as he comes
down the street, then had certain of his features been obscured by
makeup or obstacles, I would not have recognized him. And so it looks
as though whenever one makes a perceptual judgment, there are visual
(or sensory) 'cues' which will serve as the 'data' for a reconstruction of
the perceptual judgment as an inference. For clearly, in some sense
one must have been aware of those 'cues', even if one is unable to
articulate them later.

Compared to these impressive sorts of similarity between inferences

and perceptual judgments, the differences between them look at first
to be fairly subtle. In the first place, one can be enabled by virtue of
148 WILLIAM S. B O A R D M A N

certain characteristics visibly displayed by X to recognize it as a Y

without deliberately or consciously having taken notice of those charac-
teristics. While the presence or availability of those 'cues' may be
causally necessary to one's seeing what he sees, the observer may
nevertheless be wholly unable to list them in any helpful way; whereas,
in the case of an inference, he must be able to list or advert explicitly
to the data he has used (or, if he has already forgotten them, he must
have earlier gone through such a list). One might, of course, try to
patch up the comparison by invoking unconsciously used data or implicit
reasons, after the manner of Harman, 7 Pitcher, s and perhaps Pollock; 9
but that risks begging the question at issue. Secondly, not only may a
person fail to mention the cues which arguably he used in his perceptual
recognition, often - when questioned about them specifically - one
misdescribes those characteristics. Thus, as is perfectly familiar to us,
one's claim to have recognized a friend at a party may be far more
reliable than one's response to questions about how the friend looked
or what he was wearing. Indeed, it is a crucial feature of one's ability
to recognize someone or to see that something is the case that the
reliability of his perceptual judgment outstrips his ability to say accu-
rately how he was enabled to see what he saw. a° Sometimes, the
perceptual judgment in question seems too simple for its relevant 'cues'
to be specified: H o w indeed is one enabled to see that the wall is
yellow, if seeing is really inferring? Sometimes, the difficulty is that we
do not really have a classification scheme of the 'cues' which is as finely
graded as the things we are enabled to perceive: one can often tell,
from the way the kitchen smells, what is cooking, though one would
be unable to describe the odor except as 'the odor of burnt toast' or
'the odor of roast beef'. And sometimes, the difficulty seems to be
the enormous complexity behind the judgment. Frequently a person
acquires the ability to tell that his spouse or best friend is angry without
being able to specify what, in those circumstances, enabled him to tell;
and even others who observe him in action may be hard pressed to
specify the operative 'cues'. Often a parent can recognize his child at
great distances, or from unusual perspectives, or from a largely ob-
scured view, in a way which defies specific explanation. And that is
exactly the feature of an exercise of a perceptual ability which makes
it distinct from an inference: its reliability outstrips any set of inferences
which hopes to 'emulate' or 'replicate' the whole set of perceptual
judgments which are exercises of that perceptual ability. 11
 RELATIVITY OF PERCEPTUAL KNOWLEDGE 149

No doubt when one, say, recognizes his child from a partial view,
there are causal 'cues' which serve as necessary conditions; the problem
in one's or someone else's specifying these cues arises largely from their
complexity and redundancy'. Imagine that any of numerous sets of facial
features will enable a parent to recognize his child; and suppose that
several sets of these features are available to the parent in the current
circumstances; then he may be able correctly and reliably to recognize
this as his child without being able to identify that set of facial character-
istics which enabled him to do so. i2 In fact, because of such redundancy,
the parent may falsely suppose that he was able to recognize his child
by one characteristic, whereas in fact it was some set of characteristics
not including that feature which was the 'but-for' causal condition of
his recognition. In this sort of instance, the parent's perceptual judg-
ment ('that is my child') is far more reliable than any attempt by him
to infer the conclusion from explicitly noted data: for an inference is
only as good as its data, and in this instance the data which the parent
is able to articulate do not conclusively support the judgment that he
is seeing his child. Moreover, there is no guarantee that an independent
investigator could do better: he might confirm the reliability of the
parent's repeated recognitions of his child over time and varying circum-
stances, but be unable to offer sets of causally sufficient 'cues' which
would with equal reliability have supported inferences 'replicating' the
parent's judgments.
This should not be surprising. When certain 'cues' are the causally
sufficient conditions for a person's being able to recognize someone,
then, for the observer to bring off his recognition, it is not necessary
that he be able to articulate or advert to the 'cues'; it is necessary only
that they be in fact displayed to him. 13 Unlike an inference, the credi-
bility of a perceptual judgment of recognition does not depend upon
one's beliefs about how he was able to arrive at his judgment; all that
is required is that he reliably make the judgment upon the presentation
of causally necessary conditions - conditions which may go unidentified.
Similarly, there are additional conditions which are causally necessary
for one to see that this is his child: one's eyes, optic nerves, and brain
centers must be in certain states within certain tolerances; and beyond
such conditions of the observer, the environment must either possess
certain characteristics or anyway lack certain other characteristics. But
once again, in order to observe that something is the case, a person
need not advert to or use beliefs about these conditions: it is sufficient
150 W I L L I A M S. B O A R D M A N

that the causal conditions be satisfied; the person need not k n o w that
they are.
Thus, although s o m e perceptual judgments may be 'reconstructed'
fairly accurately as inferences, not all can be so 'reconstructed'. For
one thing, the use of explicit inferences presupposes the ability to make
other judgments non-inferentially. This 'ultimate' dependency of rule-
following judgments upon 'intuitive' judgments is at the bottom of the
common-sense view that inferences rest upon observation: if one can-
not, e.g., simply see what the data are, then he will not be able to infer
things from them. And for another, we may be far more confident
about a perceptual judgment's reliability than about any identification
of its 'implicit data'. Just as inferences are liable to go wrong, so one's
exercise of perceptual abilities is fallible. To be sure, sometimes what
makes a perceptual judgment 'go wrong' m a y be analogous to the
corresponding flaw in an inference: a background belief may have
been false, or some of the crucial 'cues' may have been obscured, or
sometimes one may have been incautious or hasty. But sometimes,
unlike instances of inferences, no one can say why, on that particular
occasion, a person's ability to recognize things such as this failed him.
We are now in a position to understand why, as Austin points out
in his 'Other Minds', challenges and questions pertaining to a perceptual
claim of recognition follow a different pattern from ones pertaining to
an inference. If one wants to challenge or gauge the credibility of an
inference, he needs to look at the data used and at the grounds which
related them to the sort of conclusions drawn. But if one wants to
challenge or scrutinize a perceptual judgment of recognition, one likely
has no explicit record to consider. And since the reliability of the
perceptual judgment may outstrip that of any inference suggested as its
'replication', examining a 'replication' may not be an accurate way of
evaluating the credibility of the perceptual judgment. Instead, one must
look to the past performances of the perceiver - to see whether it is
likely that he has developed the ability which he claims to have used
on this occasion, and to see whether this occasion was the sort to have
permitted its reliable exercise. (In a closely analogous way, when we
want to determine whether Jones' tennis playing on this occasion was
skillful or merely lucky, we look to whether he has had the opportunity
to develop such skill and whether the present circumstances were propi-
tious for its exercise; we do n o t demand that Jones cite a set of explicit
rules for playing tennis, since that will not in general be a reliable
 RELATIVITY OF PERCEPTUAL KNOWLEDGE 151

indicator of what we wish to assess.) After all, when we question a

person who claims perceptual knowledge, we want to find out whether
the person probably did see what he supposed he recognized, not
whether he would have been able to infer what he saw from some
explicit set of data.
Thus we find Austin's insistence on the distinction between recogniz-
ing and inferring to be fully justified. As a result, Austin is supported
in his further claim that certain sorts of facts about the perceiver and
about the thing perceived need not be substantiated by the perceiver
in order for it to be correctly asserted that he has seen what he supposed
himself to have seen. Although these items would be part of the data of
an inference which 'emulates' the perceptual judgment, the perceiver's
grounds for believing them are not relevant to whether he saw what he
said he saw: he did not claim to have inferred, but to have recognized.
Thus, the distinction between recognizing and inferring forestalls one
traditional entrance of the problem of skepticism. For Jf seeing really
were the making of an inference, then the observer would certainly
have to include in his grounds for his perceptual judgment some details
concerning these 'cues'; and he would also need to have subsidiary
evidence tending to substantiate such details. And since one scarcely
ever has relevant and conclusive evidence about such things, traditional
skeptical problems would consequently assert themselves and force the
denial that one ever really does see such a thing as that X was at the
party. But since recognizing is not the making of an inference, these
details are not data which the observer needs to have adverted to and
made sure of; instead, they are causal conditions which simply must
have been satisfied - independently of what the observer knew or
reasonably believed. Indeed, the observer can make an inference which
goes quite in the opposite direction: realizing that he has seen X at the
party, and realizing that doing so required a host of causal conditions
to have been satisfied, he is able to infer that these conditions must
have been satisfied.

We shall be able to appreciate the special features of perceptual recog-

nition which explain its differences from inference if we see it as an
instance of the wider category of 'intuitive' judgments - ones which do
not bring rules to bear. (While this discussion will try to make the
152 WILLIAM S. BOARDMAN

different kinds of judgments clear by concentrating on the extremes of

fully intuitive judgments as contrasted with inferential judgments, we
need to remember that there are many 'mixed' instances. When, for
example, one claims to have recognized a goldfinch 'from its color and
its bill', one is articulating a general range of characteristics which
enabled him to identify the bird as a goldfinch: like the corresponding
instance of inference, if goldfinches have no distinguishing sort of bill,
then the claim of recognition fails.) To acquire an ability to make
intuitive judgments, one typically must be trained through apprentice-
ship by someone who has the intuitive ability already (or must have
acquired the ability through much experience). The pupil acquires the
intuitive ability by having large numbers of specific judgments corrected
or confirmed by the master; he subsequently acquires, e.g., 'an ear' for
language, 'a nose' for argument, 'an eye' for fashion. Even when his
training is aided by the use of some explicit rules (as students of English
are aided by 'rules of grammar'), his eventual ability to make reliable
judgments 'by ear' can exceed his capacity and that of his teacher to
articulate explicit, general rules which decide those cases correctly.
Often, the development of a set of comprehensive, explicit rules is
dependent upon and subsequent to the existence of someone's intuitive
ability to make the relevant judgments. For example, long before Aris-
totle or other logicians, people were able to distinguish good arguments
from poor ones on a case-by-case basis; later, rules of logic were devised
to allow a fairly mechanical and systematic identification of valid argu-
ments. Such rules enable someone who has not mastered the intuitive
enterprise to make judgments whose reliability rivals those of the ex-
pert. But, often, the set of explicit rules is never as reliable in the huge
variety of instances as is the expert's intuitive ability. (Notice how any
given system of formal logic can deal with only a fairly narrow type of
valid argument - never with the whole range of them at once; for the
resulting complexity of rules dealing with all valid arguments would be
overwhelming.) Thus, even if we could 'reconstruct' some intuitive
abilities as the mechanical application of explicit rules, we could not
'reconstruct' all. Some are simply too complicated; and, anyway, the
use of explicit rules presupposes the ability to make other judgments
intuitively.
The special advantage of an intuitive ability is that it allows far-
reaching yet reliable extrapolations to be made on the meager basis of
relatively few instances which have served as the basis of one's instruc-
 RELATIVITY OF PERCEPTUAL KNOWLEDGE 153

tion. Inferential judgment, on the contrary, is firmly tethered to those

conditions specified in its explicit rules. Thus in learning to recognize
X in circumstances where he is wearing his hat and walking, one may
thereby acquire the ability to recognize him even when he is seated
and hatless. In contrast, if we have a list of characteristics which un-
iquely identify X and only some but not all of the items are satisfied,
then we can infer neither that it is X nor that it is not.14
However, intuitive abilities possess a special disadvantage: there may
be hidden limitations on the circumstances in which they can be reliably
exercised. If I have learned to recognize goldfinches while in Britain,
I have not thereby acquired the ability to recognize them in a rain
forest inhabited by other species of bird resembling the goldfinch in
ways for which the population of British birds has not prepared me.
Yet I might not realize that (in this different environment) I may not
properly identify the bird before me as a goldfinch (even if it happens
to be a goldfinch). In contrast, if I were working from a complete and
explicit inventory of the characteristics of goldfinches, I would - even
in a rain forest - be able to identify the bird before me as a goldfinch,
supposing that I ascertained the inventory to be satisfied. Thus, while
the tether of an intuitive ability is more elastic than that of an inference,
it is liable to break without warning.
As a practical matter, the hidden limitations of intuitive abilities
become a difficulty when, e.g., one is called upon to identify one's
assailant from a police line-up: realizing that he has the ability to
discriminate the culprit from all the other people who were in the park
at the time may mislead one into supposing that he has the rather
different ability to identify the culprit from some group of people
randomly chosen from a much larger population. What makes this
familiar limitation a philosophical difficulty is that one may not be abte
to tell when the current circumstances are significantly or sufficiently
unlike the ones in which he acquired his ability that he cannot count
on its reliable exercise.
The liability of a perceptual judgment to fail to be knoMedge does
not, by itself, support a thoroughgoing skeptical challenge to seeing as
a means of knowing. That one sometimes mistakenly supposes that he
recognizes this X as Y does not prove that in different, more customary
circumstances he must fail to recognize an X as a Y: my subsequent
bird watchings, for example, might be restricted to the British environ-
ment. After all, one's perceptual judgment is an exercise of a skill
154 W I L L I A M S. B O A R D M A N

which, like any other skill, might be successful only in certain circum-
stances - like that of a tennis player who is an expert on clay courts
but not on grass. Moreover, as Dretske urges, is even if one's ability to
see that X is Y is restricted to a narrow set of circumstances, neverthe-
less, its exercise does not require him to know that he is in favorable
circumstances; it suffices that he be in them.
The threat of skepticism does arise, however, when we consider a
further point. If we concede that a person's perceptual judgments are
liable to error in circumstances which are abnormal or atypical com-
pared to the circumstances in which one has acquired the ability to
make that sort of perceptual judgment, then we can argue that some
of his perceptual judgments of this sort nevertheless qualify as knowl-
edge only if we can distinguish abnormal from normal circumstances
independently of whether they permit success. Only if we can do that
can we distinguish the fortuitously correct perceptual judgments which
occur in abnormal circumstances from the knowledge obtained through
perception in the normal circumstances. When the perceptual judgment
that X is Y is made in abnormal circumstances, it will require supple-
mentary knowledge in order for it to qualify as knowledge: this is
because abnormal circumstances for a perceptual judgment are those
in which the application of one's ability to recognize that X is Y fails
to rule out other relevant possibilities to Xs being Y. For example, if
I subsequently try to apply my goldfinch spotting skills while in a rain
forest, I shall then need to exclude the possibility that I am seeing a
bird which, though not belonging to the class of non-goldfinches in the
British population of birds (the normal circumstances for the exercise
of my skill), nevertheless is not a goldfinch. And again, if my father's
twin, whom I have never met, is in town, then despite my confidence
that it is my father whom I see from some distance, and even though
it is in fact my father, nevertheless, I may not see that it is; for here
my apparent recognition is consistent with its being my father's twin
whom I see. Notice in these examples that the obstacle to my gaining
knowledge by recognition is that although I have learned to discriminate
Ys from a familiar set of non-Ys, I have not learned to discriminate
them from the different set or kind of non-Ys relevant to these unaccus-
tomed situations. In these atypical circumstances, I could know that I
was seeing a goldfinch (or, my father) only if I had supplementary
knowledge eliminating the further alternatives.
Thus to meet the general skeptical challenge, one must be able to
 RELATIVITY OF PERCEPTUAL KNOWLEDGE 155

distinguish, in a way which is not arbitrary, those circumstances in which

a perceptual judgment needs to be accompanied by supplementary
information eliminating relevant alternative possibilities from those cir-
cumstances in which a perceptual judgment requires no such supplen
mentation in order to be knowledge. And so, it is required that relevant
possibilities not arise in every circumstance: only facts of the situation
can raise relevant alternative possibilities which need to be eliminated
in order for one to see that X is I1. In particular, as both Austin and
Dretske insist, the mere conceivability of alternative possibilities must
not necessitate supplementary information. Thus, for example, though
it is logically possible that the person I see is a clone of my father,
secretly contrived by invading Martians, nevertheless, I need not know
that this possibility is not realized in order to recognize him as my
father.
Although it is tempting to fall in with this insistence that we distin-
guish between circumstances where real possibilities arise and those
where they do not, neither Austin nor Dretske shows how to draw such
a distinction without begging crucial questions. The difficulty is to settIe,
without being arbitrary or ad hoc, just what kinds of facts and what
selection of them do create a 'real' or 'relevant' possibility, one which
marks the circumstances as abnormal or atypical. For what at first
appears to be a mere conceivability can often be restated so that it
seems to be a 'genuine' possibility, "actually realizable", in Dretske's
words, "in the nuts and bolts of the particular system in question". ~6
And, as a result, it is difficult to show that an), circumstance is not
abnormal.
Suppose it to be a fact that although my father has no twin, he has
living in Timbuktu a Doppelgiinger - a look-alike~ Then does that fact
create a 'real' possibility that it is my father's double whom I am seeing
now (as I look down the street in Appleton, Wisconsin)? If the actual
existence of a look-alike creates a 'real' possibility that I might be
mistaken in my judgment that I see my father, then, since I possess no
supplementary information excluding that possibility, we shall have to
say that I do not see that it is my father approaching - even though it
is him, his Doppelgiinger currently being in Timbuktu. Using this pat-
tern of identifying 'real' possibilities, we could raise skeptical challenges
virtually in every case where someone claims to see that X is 17. For
example, it is surely a fact that some Hollywood make-up artist has the
ability to disguise somebody so that I would mistake him (at this dis-
156 WILLIAM S. BOARDMAN

tance) for my father; whether such a person has had the opportunity and
desire to deceive me is a matter about which I have no supplementary
knowledge. Indeed, the recent facts of biological discovery might even
make it actually possible that with great sums of money and patience
a team of scientists could clone a genetic copy of my father. The
problem is that there are always numerous subsets of facts which, by
themselves - in the absence of further facts - would serve as relevant
evidence that one is mistaken. 17 If the existence of such a subset of
facts is sufficient to raise 'relevant' alternative possibilities, then the
claim to knowledge of every perceptual judgment unalloyed with supple-
mentary knowledge of the further facts would be compromised. But,
clearly, the same considerations would prevent one from knowing any
subset of facts, since there would always be still further facts that one
would need to know first.
On the other hand, we might insist upon including such further facts
along with the subclasses as defining "the circumstances which in fact
prevailed on this occasion". 18 Thus, for example, even though my
father's Doppelgdnger exists, it is a further fact that he is currently in
Timbuktu and so not available for my inspection. Accordingly, we
might say that my mistaking my father's look-alike for him was not a
'genuine' possibility under 'the prevailing circumstances'. But now the
problem is that since 'the prevailing circumstances' include all of the
facts which prevented or were inconsistent with the realization of alter-
native possibilities, this option would serve as a pattern for making
every perceptual judgment which happens to be correct an instance of
knowledge: returning to the example where my father's twin is in town,
it is a further fact that the twin is currently in another part of town and
so not available to my scrutiny (and so, my having mistaken him for
my father would not be a genuinely alternative possibility under 'the
prevailing circumstances'); and when I see the goldfinch in the rain
forest, it is a further fact that no spurious goldfinches are on the tree
to which my eyes are turned. In general, whenever an alternative
possibility is not realized, there will always be facts which either pre-
vented or were inconsistent with its realization. Nor is there any non-
arbitrary way to single out the truly relevant facts of the prevailing
circumstances (my father's twin is in town; my father's Doppelgdnger
is not) from those which are not truly relevant (my father's twin is in
another part of town; the spurious goldfinches are on other trees).
Thus, it seems futile to search for a principled, non-arbitrary way to
 RELATIVITY OF PERCEPTUAL KNOWLEDGE 157

distinguish 'abnormal' from 'normal' circumstances. The problems 19 for

this sort of account are much deeper than Dretske allows when he (quite
properly) acknowledges "flexibility" and "plasticity" in the notion of
"relevant alternative possibilities". 2°

What is required to block the general skeptical challenge to perceptual

knowledge is something more radical than a distinction between the
customary circumstances of perceptual judgment and atypical ones.
Surely Austin is correct in arguing that while it is the purpose of a
claim of knowledge of p to exclude some specific ways of being mistaken
about p, no knowledge claim is intended to exclude all conceivable
ways of being mistaken. And so the host of skeptical challenges to a
claim of knowledge is often frivolous: as Austin says, "Enough is
enough".21 What refutes a person's claim to know that p is a showing
that 'p' is probably false or that there is "some concrete reason to
suppose that [he] may be mistaken in this case"; 22 the inherent liability
of a human to mistake does not prevent one from knowing things. But
if a person's knowing that p does not require him to be able to meet
every conceivable challenge, then we ought to be able to specify which
challenges he must be able to meet in order (to be correctly said) to
know that p. In other words, if 'enough is enough', how do we deter-
mine what is enough? I suggest that when a person claims knowledge,
he does so in a context where some specific difficulties in supposing
that p have been raised explicitly or implicitly: it is these difficulties
which both make a claim of knowledge appropriate and also determine
what counts as 'enough' to be correctly said in this context to know
that p.
Warnock has attacked philosophers who use, as I do, the notion of
a claim of knowledge as a central element in their accounts of knowing;
he accuses such philosophers of greatly exaggerating the importance of
claims to know. 23 To escape Warnock's criticisms, we may distinguish
roughly between two sorts of circumstances in which we speak of some-
one's knowing that p or seeing that X is y.24 In what we may style
a biographical context, the question motivating the discussion is the
explanation or moral appraisal of a person's conduct. In this type of
context, the interrogators have already discovered the truth of 'p' or
that X is Y; what they want to determine is why the person acted the
158 WILLIAM S. B O A R D M A N

way he did - and whether he was, at the time he acted, in a reasonable

position to act in accordance with p's being true. Suppose that a
particular bridge was in danger of imminent collapse, and yet a super-
visor sends a workman across it to fetch a tool; then the question
whether the supervisor is to blame for the workman's subsequent death
or injury will focus on whether the supervisor knew or could see that
the bridge was unsafe. If, for instance, the supervisor had merely been
aware of various rumors regarding the bridge's lack of safety but was
reasonable in dismissing them, then he would not be to blame for
the tragedy. In biographical circumstances, we distinguish between a
person's knowing that the bridge was unsafe, and his having been in
ignorance of the bridge's lack of safety. The distinction between 'he
knew' and 'he ought to have known' is not very interesting in this type
of circumstance, since either makes him blameworthy; indeed, it is
worth noting that lawyers frequently alternate the two expressions indif-
ferently. Even the distinction between 'he knew' and 'he believed' is
not very interesting: for his inability to have claimed to know that the
bridge was in imminent danger would not serve as an excuse or explana-
tion so long as he had supposed that the bridge was in imminent danger
of collapse. Again, when we are explaining or predicting a person's
acts, the distinctions are treated in the same way: the general who fears
that the enemy 'knows' of the planned invasion on Tuesday would not
(and should not) be mollified by a showing that the enemy generals
could not be entitled to claim knowledge of the plans - since they have
only guessed at them; it is sufficient corroboration of his fears if they
are prepared to act in accordance with the proposition 'our enemy is
planning an invasion on Tuesday'. It is in these biographical circum-
stances where one confesses and admits to having known, rather than
claims to have knownY
But there is another sort of context where the interrogators have not
already discovered whether 'p' is true, and where the question motivat-
ing the discussion is whether 'p' may be accepted as established or
certified. In what we may call certification circumstances, to talk of
knowing or having recognized or having seen that p is to make or
endorse a claim that p - to advance 'p' as established, in contrast to its
being highly probable (though less than conclusive), a reasonable bet,
or only a guess. Here the truth of 'p' is being claimed together with
the person's being in a special position to make the strongest sort of
 RELATIVITY OF PERCEPTUAL KNOWLEDGE 159

claim. It is with certification circumstances that epistemological dis-

cussions, including the present one, are chiefly concerned.
Without a special context, the question 'Do you know that X is )1.9'
is incomplete. Apart from artificial examples coined by philosophers,
the question would be asked only in circumstances where a problem
with the supposition that X is Y or with the speaker's possession of
that information was explicitly stated or contextually apparent: 'Given
that this is too early in the spring for goldfinches, how do you know it
was a goldfinch?'. 'Given that your father's twin is in town, how do
you know it was your father?'. Again, the questioner might make it
clear that he had heard the prevalent rumors bruiting that p, and ask
whether the person knows that p: in such a case the gravamen is that
the assertion of p is merely an unsubstantiated rumor.
Accordingly, statements of the form 'I know that p', 'I saw that p',
and 'He recognized X as being Y', should normally be viewed as
responses to specific sorts of worries. 26 Apart from such suggestions of
a specific sort of worry', a declaration of knowledge is vacuous, though
it may be made substantive by our presupposing some sort of worry as
understood by the speaker. In this respect, Austin was perfectly correct
in noting the similarity of a declaration of knowledge to a guarantee: 27
a guarantee is not made absolutely, but against contingencies of poor
workmanship, poor design, liability to misuse by the clumsy, liability
to the ravages of long and hard use. One can guarantee that a product
wilt continue to work during the worst sort of electrical storm or after a
typically savage attack by a four-year-old, but one cannot meaningfully
simply guarantee a product unless some range of usual, customary
defects or liabilities is understood. No doubt the relativity" of guarantees
can escape notice because their audience is usually acquainted with the
sorts of liabilities to which a particular kind of product is subject, and
so has some idea which of those liabilities one could reasonably expect
a manufacturer to minimize or extinguish. In a parallel way, when a
speaker is prepared to urge the truth of 'p', the context usually makes
clear to him what his hearers consider to be the obstacle(s) to accepting
'p' as true. Thus, as Ebersote points out, 2s in the absence of a special
context, it is outrageous for one to say that he knows this or that. It
isn't that his statement would be false; rather, it would be empty -
merely an emphatic way of saying 'p'.
What makes it appropriate, then, for someone to say that he knows
160 WILLIAM S. B O A R D M A N

that X is Y is the doubt regarding Xs being Y which has been expressed

or suggested. And when, in those circumstances, a person says that he
knows or sees that p, he is saying that he can respond definitively to
that doubt as being groundless or can certify 'p' notwithstanding it.
Thus, suppose that the worry about whether it is my father who is
ringing the doorbell is that his schedule would prevent its being him.
Then perhaps I am able to counter the doubt with the information that
he had told me earlier that he would take a break to visit this morning.
Or perhaps I have recognized him as he walked toward the front
window. Either of these replies defends the assertion, that it is my
father, against the suggested reason for doubt; in either case I may
properly claim knowledge. But if, on the other hand, the worry is that
it might be my father's twin or Doppelgiinger who has come to meet
me, then I shall not be able to dismiss that doubt by saying that I
recognize him as my father.
Thus to say 'I know that p' or 'I see that p' is not to give an absolute
guarantee that p: one is stating that he is in a position relative to specific
worries to settle definitely the question whether p. He may be placed
in such a position by various sorts of circumstances: he may have
conclusive evidence; he may have recognized the fact; he may have
received assurances from someone else who k n e w . 29 The appropriate-
ness and success of his grounds will depend both upon the nature of
the worries which were raised and on the circumstances in which he
was placed relative to p. But in any case, whether such a worry needs
to be taken seriously (and so issues in 'I know that p' or 'I see that p'
or, instead, 'I would bet that p') will depend upon whether there are
grounds in the current circumstances which suggest the likelihood of
the worry's being true. Imagine that upon my looking out the window
and announcing to my wife that my father is coming up the path, she
replies whimsically, 'Perhaps it is only a Doppelgdnger': although I
cannot then give the assurance that I recognize my father, neither must
I concede reasonable doubt. A doubt about whether p does not properly
arise upon a whimsy. It is otherwise if we have recently heard reports
from our neighbors of their being astonished by a look-alike to my
father: then the worry is legitimate, and I must admit that I do not (at
this distance, anyway) see that it is my father.
However, a claim of knowledge is unlike a guarantee, in that beyond
one's being entitled to claim to know that p under the circumstances,
'p' must actually be true in order for one to know that p. When a
 RELATIVITY OF PERCEPTUAL KNOWLEDGE 161

product fails in precisely the circumstances in which the manufacturer

guaranteed it, it is nonetheless true that the manufacturer did guarantee
the product; but when a person claims to know that p in circumstances
where he is able to defend the assertion of 'p' against specific contextual
worries, if it nevertheless transpires that 'p' is false, then the person
did not know that p.30 Imagine, then, that in circumstances about which
my wife and I have been kept ignorant (e.g., my father has carefully
planned a surprise meeting of his twin brother and my family), my
father's twin approaches my house and hears this dialogue between me
and my wife: 'Put on the kettle, would you? My father is here'. 'It
can't be your father - he's still at work: remember, he's on the morning
shift this month'. 'I know it's him - I see him'. In such circumstances,
my uncle is in a position to be amused by my false claim of knowledge.
One's being warranted under the circumstances in claiming to know
that p is only a necessary condition of one's actually knowing it.
On the other hand, imagine that in the same circumstances - as
before, my father has planned the surprise meeting - it is in fact nay
father who approaches the house, his twin brother remaining unseen
in the car parked by the curb. In this case, the claim of knowledge
expressed to my wife is true: here I am in a position to surmount my
wife's objections to my identification of the visitor as my father; and,
moreover, it is my father. The further fact of my father's twin being
nearby is irrelevant to whether I know what I claim to know, as are
additional facts such as that my father has a Doppelganger (residing in
Timbuktu), who, were he approaching the house, would be mistaken
by me for my father.
One is probably unsatisfied at first glance with these protestations of
irrelevancy. But that is due, I think, to a confusion between two sets
of contexts: there is, first, the context in which the person in the
example assures his wife (against the worry that the father's work
schedule prevents his being the visitor) that he sees that the visitor is
his father; but there is the further circumstance of the reader who,
looking at the example from a God's-eye view, has information which
the wife in the example does not - that the father's twin is in the
vicinity. If the reader imagines himself in the example and invested
with this further information, then he may imagine that the relevant
context contains the additional worry - that the visitor might be his
father's twin; and, as I have said earlier, if that worry were properly
raised, the husband could not reasonably claim to know that the visitor
162 WILLIAM S. B O A R D M A N

is his father. Yet, on the contrary, the additional information possessed

by the reader does not define the context in which the claim of knowl-
edge should be judged. In effect, the person in the example is imagined
as being queried in two separate ways: 'Given that your father is
supposed to be on his morning shift, can you be sure that it is him?'
and 'Given that your father's twin is in the vicinity, can you be sure
that this is your father?'. A legitimate form of this sort of supplementing
of context occurs in a court of law when new information comes to
light of which an eyewitness had been ignorant: to the question now
put to him, 'Can you (now) be sure that it was your father whom you
saw (in light of the currently disclosed fact that your uncle was in the
neighbor-hood)?', the person must reply that he might be mistaken in
supposing that it was his father whom he saw, even though he originally
entertained no such qualms. He must now testify that he thinks he saw
his father, not that he recognized him; he cannot endorse his earlier
claim to know that it was his father.
Potential confusion between distinct sets of contexts is abetted by
the subtle linguistic complexities of the relationships between present
and past tenses of the verb 'know', and between first-person claims to
know and indirect reports of such claims. When one says 'I knew' or
'he knew' or 'he knows', one is not merely reporting that X was or is
in a position to claim knowledge; one is endorsing it as one's own
current claim. When I say 'I knew that p', I thereby claim to know that
p now; and when I say 'He knew that p', once again I claim to know
that p. But if the current circumstances involve a further worry -
concerning whether p - which did not arise in the context in which the
earlier claim occurred, one cannot endorse that claim (one cannot say,
'X knew that p') without thereby implying that X was in a position to
overcome this further worry. Thus, when the context has changed, 'I
knew' does not work simply as the past tense of 'I know', and 'he knew'
does not merely report the truth of another person's earlier claim, 'I
know'. For that reason, a person possessing the additional information
that the father's twin was in the vicinity may not say that the husband
knew that the visitor was his father: for that would falsely imply that
the husband had been in a position to overcome the potential objection
to his identification, 'How can you be sure that it is not your father's
twin?'. Nevertheless, the husband's claim was appropriate and true. To
deny this would be to plunge immediately into the problems which we
surveyed at the close of Section 2 above: it would be to demand
 RELATIVITY OF PERCEPTUAL KNOWLEDGE 163

supplementary knowledge excluding every mistake whose possibility is

supported by some subset of facts. For it is not only the fact of the
twin's visit of which the husband is ignorant; he is also ignorant of the
Doppelgiinger who resides in Timbuktu, of the Hollywood make-up
artist, and of numerous other facts which - were he to know them
selectively without knowing further facts inconsistent with the alterna-
tive possibilities they raise - would prevent him from ever being entitled
to claim knowledge.
When we consider the context in which someone claims to know
something, we are frequently in possession of new information which
was not available in the original circumstances. This new information
raises alternative possibilities to p's being the case which we should
want to exclude before we might now claim to know that p. But our
consequent inability to endorse a claim to know that p which was made
in the original circumstances does not show that that claim was false.
It merely shows that we do not now stand in the shoes of the original
claimant.
Perhaps it will help to notice that this peculiarity of endorsement is
not confined to knowledge claims. When we consider a person who
lives in different social and cultural circumstances from our own, we
may find ourselves unable to endorse his view of his duties and obliga-
tions, since they are conditioned by institutional rules inconsistent with
our own; and yet we sometimes want to admit not only that such a
person did what reasonably s e e m e d right to him but that it was right
for him then and there. Yet frequently we cannot directly say that what
he did was right, since doing so endorses his judgment from the social
context in which we stand. Thus we find difficulties about how to phrase
our claim that his judgment that he had a duty to resort to infanticide
or sacrifice to the gods was correct in his circumstances. Nevertheless,
such difficulties ought not to lead us to imagine that one's moral duties
are absolute, independent of the institutional framework of the society
in which one lives. Similarly, the obstacles to endorsing one's earlier
claim of knowledge or someone else's claim of knowledge ought not to
make us imagine that true claims of knowledge are absolute, indepen-
dent of the context in which they are put forth.
But will this conception of claims of knowledge as relative to their
contexts help to turn aside the skeptical attacks with which Austin and
Dretske were concerned when they tried to distinguish between the
normal and abnormal circumstances of perception? Imagine that having
164 WILLIAM S. B O A R D M A N

learned to recognize goldfinches in a British environment, I subse-

quently try to apply my skills while visiting a rain forest. Later, I report
to friends that a goldfinch was actually eating a banana. 'But', they
query, 'are you sure it wasn't a robin? We've heard of robins eating
bananas, but never goldfinches'. Against the suggestion that the bird
might have been a robin, my British training stands me in good stead,
for I have learned to distinguish goldfinches from robins. And so I can
properly (and truly - if it was indeed a goldfinch) claim to have recog-
nized it as a goldfinch. But suppose, instead, that one of my friends,
who is more sophisticated about the inhabitants of the rain forest, asks
me whether it mightn't have been a 'spurious goldfinch' (whose Latin
name he pronounces to me): now I must reply that I am not sure, that
I haven't learned to distinguish those sorts of birds. Or perhaps if he
adds that these 'spurious goldfinches' have red wing bars, I shall have
noticed the bird's wing and will now be able to know that it was a
goldfinch. Again, changing the example, suppose that having been
mugged in a park, a person now surveys suspects in a line-up. If he
identifies 'number three' as the culprit, he is claiming something like
this: to see that it is 'number three' as opposed to the others in the
line-up. While he is not merely claiming a similarity between the culprit
and 'number three' ('number three' might be the member of the line-
up most resembling the culprit without the victim's supposing that he
is the culprit), nevertheless, his claim is - if the present account be
correct - more limited than an absolute claim of identification. If a new
worry is posed - that the culprit might actually be someone absent from
the line-up who looks very much like 'number three' - then I don't
really see how the earlier line-up identification could reasonably be
expected to rule that out. The witness must reply that this is possible:
subsequent investigation must center on how likely this possibility is.
If a thorough investigation finds no evidence of there having been
someone else in the vicinity at the time who looked much like 'number
three', then the witness may properly claim to have recognized 'number
three' as the culprit. But, on the other hand, if the evidence suggests
that someone who looks like 'number three' was in the vicinity at
the time in question, then the witness must retract his earlier claim.
Subsequently, the witness may have an opportunity to look at this new
suspect: on this occasion, he may be able to see that the new suspect
is not the culprit - perhaps the new suspect has a prominent mole
which the witness would certainly have noticed had the culprit been so
 RELATIVITY OF PERCEPTUAL KNOWLEDGE 165

endowed, or perhaps the witness simply sees that this new suspect is not
the culprit. Such supplementary information would allow the witness to
reinstate his original claim to have recognized 'number three' as the
culprit.
When we turn to one's eyewitness identification of one's own father
or child or close friend, the identification is typically much stronger
than that of a recent mugger simply because one has spent so much
time and effort learning to distinguish one's relatives or friends from a
large variety of people. Yet even here it would be a mistake to imagine
that such an identification might be absolute; even this kind of identifi-
cation depends upon the worries which are raised in the context. A
parent might, in one context, recognize perfectly well the first-born of
his twin children; yet when a new worry arises that the second-born
might recently have undergone plastic surgery to disguise those subtle
features which formerly distinguished him from his twin, then the parent
will not have recognized him as his first-born (even though it turns out
that the twin has not had such surgery). So whether the parent has
actually recognized his first-born or has only correctly guessed his ident-
ity will depend upon which worries had been raised in the context.
Perhaps it will be thought that in arguing for a conception of claims
of knowledge as relative I am in effect giving up any useful notion of
knowledge, much as do replies to skepticism which construe knowledge
as highly probable belief. I submit that the present account does not
do this. Like Austin, I want to defend a conception of knowledge which
underlies the actual ways we talk of knowing outside philosophical
theories. Knowledge of something/s definitive, on my account, though
it is definitive against specific worries. This does not cheapen the notion
of knowledge, though it does acknowledge specific limits or boundaries.
For despite acknowledging such limits, it recognizes a qualitative differ-
ence between knowing or seeing that p and merely being convinced of
that p on the basis of what one sees. The importance of context does
not erode the distinction between knowledge and warranted belief. The
main differences between the present account and those of Austin and
Dretske are motivated by practical considerations. I contend that the
features of context which limit knowledge must be facts of which the
perceiver has some notice or warning, as he has of worries raised on
the occasion of his claim of knowledge, rather than details of the
circumstances of perception of which he might have no notice whatever.
For if there are boundaries to knowledge, then only if one can anticipate
166 W I L L I A M S. B O A R D M A N

them can one's claim of knowledge carry practical weight. Thus, I would
modify an account of knowledge such as Dretske's in the following way:
a person, K, knows that s is F relative to a contextually specified worry,
w = K's belief that s is F is caused (or causally sustained) by the
information that s is F which eliminates or rules out worry w. 31
Finally, we may note a further, distinct element in the context to
which knowledge claims are relative: they are relative to a threshold
of conclusiveness which shifts according to what is expressly at stake
in the situation. 32 A particular observation or a particular set of evi-
dence may entitle me to say to one who wishes to avoid the incon-
venience of walking up four flights of stairs for naught that I know X
is in the building - I recently noticed him walking up the stairs; and
if that was in fact X, I do know. Yet if the question is whether X might
have been the murderer of his fourth floor competitor, then that same
observation may entitle me to say only that I believe it was X whom I
saw mounting the stairs; in this different context, I may not know, even
though I have the same reasons for p which permitted me to know in
the former example.
Because a claim of knowledge is relative in the ways I have indicated,
it cannot always be transposed from one context to another. Suppose
I speak, in succession, to someone who doubts that p for one reason,
and then to someone who doubts it upon an entirely different ground:
my candid (and perhaps true) assurances to the first person that I saw
that p do not settle what should be my candid reply to the second.
Thus, no attempt to set forth the conditions of perceptual knowledge
which assumes them to be independent of the specific contexts in which
claims of knowledge are made can succeed in accounting for one's
knowledge. For many of the things one sees or otherwise knows are
known only relative to specific obstacles or problems or doubts given
in a particular context which occasioned the claim of knowledge.

NOTES

1 Austin (1962, pp. 115-24).

2 Austin (1961, pp. 44-84).
3 Ayer (i970, pp. 127-30).
4 Austin (1962, pp. I12-24 and pp. 137-42).
5 Austin (1961, pp. 47-54).
 R E L A T I V I T Y OF P E R C E P T U A L K N O W L E D G E 167

6 Dretske (1969, pp. 93-112).

7 Harman (1973, pp. 175-76 and 183-86).
8 Pitcher (1971, pp. 97-112).
9 Potlock (1974, pp. 60-64).
lo Austin (1961, p. 53). It may be that perceptual and perceptual-like skills are sometimes
even further from the reach of inference: in discussing recent research on covert aware-
ness. Alan Cowey writes that a study by Goodale and others

demonstrates with arresting clarity that not all complex computations involved in
the neural representation of shape, size and orientation are accessible to conscious
judgments of these object qualities. It is as if conscious awareness operated on a
need-to-know basis, and that many neural events such as those governing prehension
can occur without awareness in parallel with others of a similar nature that lead to
conscious awareness. (Cowey 1991, p. 103)

11 See the discussion of 'Coding and Content', in Dretske (1981, pp. 171-89). Dretske
writes:

What endows some systems with the capacity to occupy states which have, as their
semantic content, facts about some distant source is the plasticity of the system for
extracting information about a source from a variety of signals. The system, as it
were, ignores the particular messenger in order to respond to the information deliv-
ered by the messenger . . . . [The semantic] structure itself carries no information
about the means of its production (about the messenger). (Ibid., p. 187)

12 See Dretske's ingenious discussion of primary and secondary representations in Dret-

ske (1981, pp. 156-65).
13 Dretske (1981, pp. 111-23).
14 Explicit rules can also be limited to specific circumstances: one might, for instance,
give a new employee a list of characteristics which suffice to identify the boss out of those
persons working with the company, although the characteristics would not suffice to pick
him out of all his fellow residents of Manhattan.
15 Dretske (1969, pp. 124-39).
16 Dretske (1981, p. 131 - with minor interpolations).
17 See the example of the Grabit family in Lehrer and Paxon (1969, pp. 228-29).
18 Dretske (1971, pp. 6-7; italics omitted). Dretske adds that the details of these con-
ditions must include nothing which is logically or causally dependent upon the fact of
which one claims knowledge.
19 The difficulty is similar to what Richard Feldman calls "The Problem of Generality"
in his 'Reliability and Justification' (1985, po 161).
20 Dretske (1981, pp. 133-34); I will return in my penultimate paragraph to this distinct
sort of context-relativity.
zl Austin (1961, p. 52).
22 Austin (1961, p. 66).
23 Warnock (1962, pp. 19-32).
24 See Hanfling (1988, pp. 40-55).
2s Warnock (1962, p. 22).
26 This might be the sort of thing contemplated by Annis when he writes of justification
168 W I L L I A M S. B O A R D M A N

as being "relative to the issue-context"; see Annis (1978, pp. 213-19). But his use of a
defeasibility requirement (on p. 217) suggests that he does not see claims of knowledge
as being relative in the way I am suggesting.
27 Austin (1961, pp. 67-71).
2s Ebersole (1972, pp. 186-221).
z9 See Welbourne (1979); but notice that such assurances will be relative to the context
in which they were given.
3o See Harrison (1962, p. 453).
3a See Dretske's original formula (Dretske 1981, p. 86). My bold face addition implies
that there need be no such thing as the information that s is F: frequently there is, instead,
the information that s is F rather than G, the information that s is F rather than H, and
so forth, the relevant piece of information depending upon the worry specified by the
context.
32 See Austin (1961, fn. 1 on p. 76). Also Braine suggests that the threshold varies with
the .sort of proposition in question (in Braine 1971, pp. 41-63). See also Dretske (1981,
pp. 132-33).

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 R E L A T I V I T Y OF P E R C E P T U A L K N O W L E D G E 169

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9.

Department of Philosophy
Lawrence University
Appleton, WI 54912
U.S.A.