Philosophical Review

Austin and the Argument from Illusion

Author(s): Roderick Firth
Source: The Philosophical Review, Vol. 73, No. 3 (Jul., 1964), pp. 372-382
Published by: Duke University Press on behalf of Philosophical Review
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 DISCUSSION

AUSTIN AND THE ARGUMENT

FROM ILLUSION

T ISunlikely that the philosophical genius of the late John Austin

will ever be adequately appreciated by those who have merely
read his words in print; and even to listen to his lectures, brilliant as
they sometimes were, was to feel only reverberations of the extra-
ordinary analytical power which has made him one of the most
influential philosophers of his generation. It was during periods of
creative philosophical discussion that Austin's genius was most fully
displayed, for he was above all else master of a philosophical art
which he taught to others by example-an art which is perhaps best
described as the topography of concepts. This art is not of course the
whole of philosophy. But without it philosophy is impossible, and it is
doubtful that any philosopher who has had the privilege of watching
John Austin in action has failed to become for that reason a better
philosopher.
In the lectures to which he gave the title SenseandSensibilia,' Austin
applies his art to a set of concepts which have played a crucial role in
the history of Western epistemology, especially since the time of
Descartes. According to Descartes and many philosophers who have
followed him (including Ayer, whose book The Foundations of Empirical
KnowledgeAustin selects as "chief stalking horse") the primary task of
a theory of empirical knowledge is to clarify certain epistemic terms
(for example, "evidence," "rational," and "knowledge" itself) by
showing how our empirical knowledge can be justified (or "recon-
structed" if we use Descartes' metaphor) on a perceptual basis. To say
simply that empirical knowledge has a "perceptual basis," or that it
must ultimately be justified by perception, can of course mean many
different things. It might mean, for example, that the evidence for our
knowledge of the external world must ultimately be formulated in
demonstrative statements like "this is a tomato," "this is a pig," and
"this meter reads 3.5"-statements which express a judgment (a
"perceptual judgment") about the objects which we perceive. But the
traditional "Cartesian enterprise," as I shall call it, is rooted in a

1 Reconstructed from the manuscript notes by G. J. Warnock (Oxford,

I 962).

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 THE ARGUMENT FROM ILLUSION

very different conception of the "perceptual basis" of knowledge. The

philosophers whom Austin is criticizing-I shall call them "Cartesians"
-are those who have maintained that the most basic evidential
statements are statements about perceptual experience itself (as
opposed to the tomatoes and pigs which are the objectsof perceptual
experience) and, more specifically, that they are statements about a
particular constituentof this kind of experience-a constituent which is
perhaps most impartially described as "sense experience." There is also,
these philosophershave said, a "judgmental" constituent of perceptual
experience-a state of "accepting"or "having faith in" some proposition
about an object in the external world; but this state, they have held,
varies independently of sense experience to some degree so that the
two constituents of perceptual experience can easily be discriminated.
Although philosophers in the Cartesian tradition have apparently
felt that there is no room for serious doubt about the existence of a
sensory constituent of perceptual experience, they have usually made
some effort to identify it by showing how it can be distinguished from
the judgmental constituent; and for this purpose they have used a
method which has become very familiar to us. The objective of this
method is to distinguish the two constituents of perceptual experience
by drawing attention to pairs of cases in which one constituent is
approximately the same but the other quite obiously different; and to
provide the most radical contrast we are asked to compare cases of
normal perception with corresponding cases of abnormal perception.
When Macbeth has his hallucination, runs a typical argument, he is in
doubt whether there is really a dagger before him and therefore does
not "accept" a dagger or "judge" that he is confronted by a real
dagger; yet in another respect (the "sensory" respect) his experience
may be indistinguishable from the one he would have if he were
seeing, and believed that he were seeing, a real dagger. Although
arguments of this kind may take many different forms, the name
"argument from illusion" is sometimes used broadly enough so that it
can be applied to any such attempt to identify sense experience by
appealing to cases of abnormal perception. (The name is also applied
to a very different argument used by Berkeley and others against
naive realism-an argument which assumes that sense experience has
already been identified.) In this broad sense of the term, and neglecting
a few relevant digressions, most of what Austin says in Sense and
Sensibiliacan be construed as an effort to show that the argument from
illusion, in its traditional form, has been seriously impaired by con-
ceptual obscurities and confusions.

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 RODERICK FIRTH

If we think of Austin's objective in this relatively limited way,

there seems to be no room for doubt that he has achieved it with a high
degree of success. In the course of his lectures he has many stimulating
and often brilliant things to say about the terms "illusion," "delusion,"
''material,' ''perception," "looks," "appears," ''seems,' ''sense,'' and
"real"; and no philosopher who has followed his systematic analysis
of these terms, and others which have played a key role in the argument
from illusion, will ever again be able to formulate and use this argument
with the carelessness which has been characteristic of the Cartesian
tradition. This adds up to a very significant achievement with impor-
tant historical implications, but admirers of Austin may nevertheless
be tempted to conclude that he has accomplished much more than this,
and even to suppose that he has proved that perceptual experience (or,
at least, most perceptual experience) does not contain a sensory
constituent. To prove this would, of course, undermine the deepest
foundations of the entire Cartesian enterprise, and it is therefore
important to see that Austin's arguments, even if they are all valid,
are too limited in their scope to accomplish a result as revolutionary as
this.
The most obvious limitation of Austin's arguments is the one
resulting from his use of the traditional sense-datum terminology. At
the outset he formulates in the following way a "general doctrine"
which he intends to discuss during the course of his lectures:
We never see or otherwise perceive (or "sense"), or anyhow we never directly
perceive or sense, material objects (or material things), but only sense-data
(or our own ideas, impressions, sensa, sense-perceptions, percepts, etc.) [p. 2].

Throughout the lectures he continues to employ the technical philo-

sophical terminology of "sense data," "direct perception," and so
forth in formulating and criticizing the distinction which philosophers
have tried to draw by means of the argument from illusion between
perceiving (or perceptual experience) and sensing (or sense experience).
This sense-datum terminology as traditionally understood, and as
Austin himself construes it, entails a particular analysisof sense expe-
rience-a relational act-object analysis which seems to allow us to ask
(as the passage just quoted from Austin indicates) what kinds of
objectswe can or must experience in order to have a sense experience.
Consequently, a philosopher who advocates a nonrelational (for
example, an "adverbial") analysis of sense experience, or one who
believes that he can introduce and use the sense-datum terminology in
such a way that it is neutral with respect to questions concerning the

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proper analysis of sense experience, may reasonably conclude that

most of Austin's arguments leave him quite unscathed and quite free
to attempt a reconstruction of knowledge on a sensory basis. This is a
conclusion which must be approached with caution, for one of Austin's
arguments, as I shall point out, can be applied to forms of the argument
from illusion which do not presuppose an act-object analysis of sense
experience. There is an even more general reason, however, why
Austin's method of attacking the argument from illusion is not one
which can yield any revolutionary conclusions.
To see this we must recognize that the argument from illusion,
although not incorrectly called an argument, is in fact a method for
the ostensive definition of terms which are supposed to denote the
sensory constituent of perceptual experience; and since the definition
is ostensiveit does not have to be airtight in any formal respect in order
to accomplish its purpose. The best ostensive definition of a given term
for a given person is probably the simplest set of instructions which will
actually succeed in teaching him how to use the term; in practice,
therefore, we usually introduce qualifications and remove possible
ambiguities in our instructions only when we believe that these
particular refinements are necessary to prevent misunderstanding.
A philosopher who is attempting to provide an ostensive definition of
''sense experience" for a wide and varied audience will naturally want
to make his instructions tight enough to take account of all of the most
common sources of misunderstanding. But there is of course no hope
that he can forestall all possible misunderstanding, for every term which
he uses in his instructions is itself subject to misinterpretation. From
his point of view, therefore, the discovery of a loophole in the instruc-
tions does not prove that there is no sensory constituent in perceptual
experience, but merely challenges him to modify the instructions by
adding suitable qualifications. If the Cartesian philosopher is to be
won away from his analysis of perceptual experience, he must be made
to feel that the traditional method of identifying sense experience has
actually led him to believe in the existence of something (called by
him "sense experience") which in fact does not exist, and one way to do
this would be to persuade him that the argument from illusion involves
confusions which cannot be eliminated even by adding the most
ingenious of qualifications. Austin, however, does not make a serious
effort to do this. Most of his arguments are focused on a few statements
which philosophers have actually made when talking about the nature
of sense experience, and he almost never speculates about ways in
which these statements might be reformulated to meet his criticisms.

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 RODERICK FIRTH

Thus he does not show that the confusions and obscurities which he
uncovers are necessary ingredients of anyformulation of the argument
from illusion. Nor can he show that these confusions and obscurities,
undesirable as they may be, have always prevented philosophers from
teaching other philosophers how to use terms like "sense experience."
In the following pages I shall say more on this score while commenting
very briefly on some of Austin's principal objections to the argument
for illusion. But it is obvious, of course, that to offer a convincing
defense of this argument and the Cartesian enterprise would be a task
far transcending the scope of the present discussion.
If we concentrate our attention solely on Austin's criticism of the
argument from illusion, neglecting every digression and even the most
interesting of his remarks concerning secondary iss es, it is still possible
to find in Senseand Sensibiliaseveral fairly distinct objections to the
traditional formulations of this argument. In order to classify and
evaluate these objections, it is important to observe that the argument
from illusion has commonly been formulated so that it makes explicit
reference to the use of some familiar expression in ordinary speech.
With respect to a hallucinatory experience like Macbeth's, for example,
it has not seemed sufficient to most philosophers to say simply that the
sensory constituent of this experience is what it has in common with the
perceptual experience of a real dagger. Perhaps some of them have
thought that the weakness of this relatively simple ostensive definition
lies in the fact that the two experiences may share in common, in
addition to sense experience characteristic of seeing a real dagger,
afeeling of inclinationto suppose that one is seeing a real dagger. In any
case, they have usually elaborated such appeals to hallucination by
telling us that the sensory constituent is one that we might naturally
describe in such and such familiar words. Formulations of the argument
from illusion can be classified, therefore, by reference to the "pointer
words," as I shall call them, which are supposed to guide us to the
sensory constituent. When the argument from illusion is formulated as
Austin considers it (cf., e.g., p. 2 I) in a terminology which allows us to
say that to have a sense experience is to perceivea sense datum (as
opposed to "experiencing," "sensing," or just "having" a sense datum)
the pointer words are the perceptual verbs "perceive," "see," "hear,"
and so forth, and the appeal to Macbeth's hallucination might be
supplemented as follows: "Although Macbeth has not decided, and
does not think, that he sees a real dagger, and is in fact not perceiving a
dagger or any other material ('external') object, there is a special but
familiar sense of 'perceive' (or 'see') in which he is, and believes he is,

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perceiving (seeing) something.What he perceives in this special sense

is an example of the kind of thing which is to be called a 'sense datum,'
and the perceiving of it is an example of the kind of experience which is
to be called 'sense experience.' " If we want to avoid the sense-datum
terminology and formulate the argument from illusion so that it is
neutral with respect to the analysis of sense experience, we can do so
in a number of different ways by substituting certain other pointer
words for the perceptual verbs. Using the words "looks as if," for
example, instead of "perceives," the argument might run as follows:
"Macbeth does not think he sees a real dagger and in fact he does not
see one for there is no material ('external') thing which serves as the
object of his abnormal perceptual experience. But there is an expe-
riental sense of 'looks' in which it surely looks to Macbeth as
if he is perceiving something; and the experience which can be
described in these terms is an example of the kind of thing
which is to be called 'sense experience.' " Although I shall speak
of these formulations as two "forms" of the argument from illusion,
and shall refer to them respectively as Form A and Form B, they are in
fact merely skeletonswhich would have to be fleshed out by the addition
of qualifications and examples if the ostensive definition were to be as
effective as possible for a wide audience.
Now there is, I think, only one argument in Sense and Sensibilia
which can be construed as an important criticism of both Form A and
Form B of the argument from illusion, and this criticism would in fact
be equally valid against any other form of the argument from illusion.
Early in his lectures (pp. 7-8), Austin points out (but afterwards says
little more about it) that, unless we are first told how to understand the
term "material," there is a defect in any method which proposes to
identify a sense datum by contrast with a material thing. This is an
interesting and important point. Although the standard examples
which have usually been given of material (or "objective" or "external")
things are what Austin describes as "moderate-sized specimens of dry
goods," it is clear that philosophers in the Cartesian tradition have
generally wanted to maintain that people, rainbows, shadows, flames,
pictures, and even images in a looking glass, are all "external" or
"objective" things, open to observation by more than one person, and
possible objects of perceptualexperience (as opposed to senseexperience).
But no philosopher has yet provided a satisfactory definition of this
class of material or external objects, and without such a definition there
are possible sources of confusion in any ostensive definition which refers
to the perceiving of external objects or which includes terms like

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"illusion" and "hallucination" which can be defined only by employing

the concept of external object. In line with my earlier remarks about
the nature of ostensive definition, it should be observed that the
Cartesian can eliminate any particular sources of confusion which
Austin actually points out to him simply by enumerating types of things
(shadows, rainbows, voices, mirror images, beams and glows and
flashes of light, and so forth) which are not to count as objects of sense
experience. In the future, however, it is to be hoped that philosophers
interested in reconstructing our knowledge of the external world will
try to meet Austin's challenge and will define for us in general terms a
class of objects which includes dry goods and all these other "external"
things as well.2
The remaining objections to the argument from illusion in Senseand
Sensibilia are based on Austin's analysis of the ordinary use of the
perceptual verbs ("perceive," "see," "hear," and the like), and these
objections are applicable only to Form A of the argument and to other
forms which employ a sense-datum terminology. In presenting the
most basic of these objections, which as I construe it runs through
Chapters III and V, Austin maintains that in cases of genuine delusion
(for example, hallucination) "there is something not 'part of any
material thing' " (p. 28), something "conjured up" (pp. 23, 25) which
the victim of the delusion can be said to experience. As an example of
such a thing Austin mentions the mirage which is a hallucination and
not a reflection (p. 32). But there is no reason why we should allow
ourselves, Austin argues, to be led from this fact to the conclusion that
we also experience something of this kind (something said to be
"immaterial") in normal cases when we see trees, flowers, chairs,
tables, and other "material" things. And even in those abnormal
cases which are properly described not as delusions but as illusions
(for example, the Headless Woman or the church camouflaged as a
barn) there is no need to suppose that in seeing a "material" thing
(for example, the church) we are also seeing or experiencing something
"immaterial" (for example, an immaterial barn). The way to describe
a case of this kind is simply to say, for example, that we are seeing a
church which looks like a barn (p. 30).

2 It is possible, I suspect, to characterize an external object by reference

to the role which it can can play in the processes by which the sense organs
are stimulated. But the task is much more difficult than it might appear at
first thought. (Cf. my essay "The Men Themselves; or, the Role of Causation
in our Concept of Seeing," soon to appear in Studiesin the Philosophyof Mind,
ed. by Hector-Neri Castaneda.)

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 THE ARGUMENT FROM ILLUSION

Now whatever our final assessment of Austin's argument, I think it

does show very clearly that there can be a serious ambiguity in Form A
or any other form of the argument from illusion which asserts without
cautious qualification that experiencing a hallucination is an example
of seeing a sense datum or having a sense experience. Because of this
ambiguity it may appear that Austin, despite his objections to the
term "sense datum," is in effect conceding the existence of a sense
datum in cases of hallucination when the sense datum can be called,
for example, a mirage. It may appear, to put the point in another way,
that Austin has correctly followed the instructions for identifying sense
experience in cases of hallucination, and that he objects to the tradi-
tional Cartesian analysis of perceptual experience only because he fails
to find in ordinary perceptual experience a constituent of the kind which
he has successfully identified in hallucinations. But to interpret the
situation in this way would be to misconstrue the respect in which
experiencing a hallucination is supposed to be an example of experi-
encing a sense datum; for if it is an essential part of the instructions
that we are to compare hallucinations with normal perceptions and
seek out a commonconstituent, then quite obviously experiencing a
mirage and seeing a hallucinatory ("conjured up") dagger are not
themselves examples of the kind of constituent which we are supposed
to find. We do not have a hallucination whenever we see an oasis or
a dagger, and consequently we cannot infer that Austin has succeeded
in isolating even a single instance of sense experience. According
to the Cartesian tradition, the sensory constituent in the case of
Macbeth's hallucination is supposed to be something which can in
principle exist whetheror not Macbeth is having a hallucination, and
something which Macbeth can recognize before he decides that he is
having a hallucination. To say that this constituent is a hallucination,
or that to experience it is to experience a hallucination, must therefore
be understood to state a fact which Macbeth himself can know only
after his doubt is resolved-a fact, according to most of the Cartesian
tradition, about the relationship of this constituent to its causal condi-
tions. And the argument from illusion must be extended to make it
perfectly clear that the sense of "see" referred to in Form A is one that
would allow Macbeth to say, without inconsistency of any kind, "I see
a dagger but I do not know whether I am seeing a real dagger or having
a hallucination."
By extending the instructions in this way we can remove an am-
biguity from the argument from illusion, but this does not of course
guarantee that there is any sense of "see" which meets the requirement

379

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 RODERICK FIRTH

we have formulated, or that there is only one sense of "see" which

meets this requirement. Critics of the Cartesian analysis of perceptual
experience might maintain, for example, that this requirement can
be met only by supposing that "dagger" is in effect the name of a genus
of which hallucinatory daggers and "real" daggers are two species.
For in that case the statement "I see a dagger but . . ." might be
understood to mean simply "I see a real dagger or I am having a
dagger hallucination, but I don't know which." Or they might
maintain that this requirement can be met only by supposing that
"I see a dagger" means something like "I tend to think that I am
seeing a real dagger." In the face of such resistance the Cartesian will
obviously have to supplement his ostensive definition in some further
way. He might ask his critic to consider why Macbeth feels that he
should choose between this particularpair of alternatives (seeing a
dagger and having a dagger hallucination) as opposed to other
possible pairs of corresponding alternatives such as seeing a horse and
having a horse hallucination. Surely you can see, he might urge, that
there is some feature of Macbeth's experience-some qualitative
characteristic or set of characteristics-which leads him to think that
he is either seeing a dagger or having a dagger hallucination, and which
would normally have to be very different to make him wonder
whether he were seeing a horse. And surely you can see that this feature
may remain relatively constant while Macbeth's very strong tendency
to think that he is seeing a real dragger decreases at the end of his
soliloquy to a very slight tendency. It is only when "I see a dagger"
is used to describe thisfeature of Macbeth's experience that it is used to
describe sense experience.
This kind of appeal to the "qualitative similarity" of corresponding
pairs of normal and abnormal perceptual experience is discussed by
Austin at some length in Chapter V, but nothing he says there tends to
discredit such an appeal when it is used solely as a way of identifying
,sense experience. The fact that delusory perceptual experiences are
relatively rare, and are in most cases "qualitatively" quite different
from normal experiences (pp. 48-49), is of course no objection to an
ostensive definition which asks us to consider a case like Macbeth's as
we imagine it to be. And since Austin says, "I do not, of course, wish to
deny that there may be cases in which 'delusive and verdical expe-
riences' really are 'qualitatively indistinguishable' " (p. 52), he clearly
does not intend to deny that such cases are imaginable. For the most
part he is trying to show that from such qualitative similarity we
cannot infer that what we see in a hallucination is something of the
same kind that we see in normal perception. ("For why on earth

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 THE ARGUMENT FROM ILLUSION

should it notbe the case that, in some few instances, perceiving one sort
of thing is exactly like perceiving another" [p. 52] ?) But this would all
be irrelevant to the argument from illusion if that argument were free
from ambiguity in the manner which we have just discussed. For then
it would be clear that when "see" is being used as a pointer word in the
argument from illusion, to say that we see something of the same kind
in normal and abnormal perception is not to say something which can
be inferredfrom the qualitative similarity of the perceptions. It is, on
the contrary, supposed to be a way in which we can say something
aboutthe qualitative similarity of the perceptions-something about a
respect in which, to use the words just quoted from Austin, "perceiving
one sort of thing is exactly like perceiving another."
The rest of Austin's objections to the argument from illusion are
directed against certain ways of supplementing the argument as we
have so far construed it. Thus in order to help identify the sense of
"see" in which Macbeth might consistently say "I see a dagger but I do
not know whether I am seeing a real dagger or having a hallucination,"
philosophers in the Cartesian tradition have often said, in one termi-
nology or another, that in this sense of "see" Macbeth's statement does
not entail that what he is seeing exists.To this Austin objects that there
is no such sense of "see." In the case of ghosts, for example, he maintains
that "if I say that cousin Josephine once saw a ghost . . . there was in
somesense, this ghost that Josephine saw" (p. 95); and Austin would
presumably maintain in an analogous way that the dagger which
Macbeth sees also exists as a hallucination or as a hallucinatory
dagger. But Austin's arguments, useful as they are in revealing possible
sources of confusion, could not possibly convert a philosopher who is
convinced on independent grounds that Macbeth can say "I see a
dagger" simply as a way of describing his sense experience. For in that
case, as we have observed, Macbeth can consistently say "I see a
dagger but I do not know whether I am seeing a real dagger or having
a hallucination"; and if he can say this consistently it follows that his
statement "I see a dagger" cannot entaileither that there exists a real
dagger or that there exists a hallucinatory dagger. In fact, if it is just
a statement -about sense experience, one which explainswhy Macbeth
has the particular doubt which he has and not some other doubt, it
will not entail that there exists anything at all which is seen-unless,
of course (which Austin would not admit) the kind of thing which has
been called a sense datum.
Philosophers using Form A of the argument from illusion have also
tried to distinguish this sense of "see" from some other senses by
telling us that in this sense of "see" it is not possible for what is seen to

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look or seem different from what it is. With respect to this distinction,
also, Austin's objections reveal possible sources of confusion. His
discussion, for example, of Ayer's case of the man who looks at a star
and says that he sees a silvery speck no bigger than a sixpence, shows
that the "speck" is most naturally thought of as something observable
from different places, something which will look different to people
wearing glasses of different colors, and so forth, and which is therefore
not an example which helps to illustrate the Cartesian's special sense
of "see." I think, however, that Austin himself suggests a way of
clarifying the very point which the Cartesianwants to make concerning
this special sense of "see." Contrasting the speck and the star, Austin
asks: "Can the question whether the speck really is no bigger than a
sixpence, or whether it just seemsto be no bigger than a sixpence, be
seriously raised? What difference could there be between the supposed
alternatives?" (pp. 95-96). The Cartesian can ask a corresponding
question with respect to the statement "I see a dagger but I do not
know whether I am seeing a real dagger or having a hallucination."
He might ask: "Can the question be seriously raised whether the
dagger which is said to be seen is bloody or whether it just looksbloody ?"
And the fact that there couldbe no difference between these supposed
alternatives-the fact that the distinction between "is" and "looks"
is not applicable-is exactly what I mean, the Cartesian could say,
when I maintain that in this special sense of "see" it is not possiblefor
what is seen to look different from what it is.
These brief comments on some of Austin's arguments may help to
explain why I have said that SenseandSensibiliadoes not undermine the
Cartesian tradition by proving that there is no sensory constituent in
perceptual experience. Nevertheless, Austin has uncovered so many
possible sources of confusion in Form A of the argument from illusion
that even philosophers who are convinced that they can tighten up the
argument to meet Austin's criticism might well decide that this is not
the easiest way to produce an effective ostensive definition of sense
experience. Form B is one of the most promising alternatives, for it
does not presuppose an act-object analysis of sense experience and it is
not touched by most of Austin's objections to Form A. But of course
difficult questions can be raised about the meaning of the expression
"looks as if," and if Austin had devoted one or two of his lectures to an
analysis of this expression, there might not seem to be any important
reason for preferring Form B to the more traditional form of the argu-
ment from illusion.
HarvardUniversity RODERICK FIRTH

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