The Non-Existence of the Real World

Jan Westerhoff
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The Non-existence of the Real World
The Non-existence
of the Real World

by Jan Westerhoff

1
3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
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© Jan Westerhoff 2020
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First Edition published in 2020
Impression: 1
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To the lucky few
 過
猶
不
及¹

¹ ‘To go too far is not to reach it.’ Confucius: Analects XI: 16.
Acknowledgements

I am much indebted to my friends and colleagues who supplied me with

comments on earlier versions of this manuscript: Christian Coseru, Jonardon
Ganeri, Jacob Hohwy, James Ladyman, Thomas Metzinger, Graham Priest,
Mark Siderits, John Taber, and Paul Teller. The John Templeton Foundation
generously supported work on an earlier incarnation of the present work.
I would also like to thank audiences at Oxford University and Bristol Univer-
sity, where parts of this material was presented, for their comments, as well as
two anonymous readers for Oxford University Press for their detailed criti-
cism. Writing this book was a particularly long, drawn-out process (the
following pages are an ancestor of the sixth draft of the original manuscript)
and I am grateful to my wife Yuka Kobayashi and our daughter Sophie for their
support along the way.
Preface

Those readers familiar with my work will be aware that I spend a great amount
of my time trying to understand the arguments of an ancient Indian philo-
sophical school called Madhyamaka. I believe that the Mādhyamikas defend a
particularly far-reaching variety of non-foundationalism.² It occurred to me
some time ago that there are various theories within different parts of analytic
philosophy (as well as in its larger orbit), including metaphysics, epistemology,
the theory of personal identity, philosophy of science, philosophy of language,
and cognitive science that could be joined up to form a systematic development
and defence of key Madhyamaka claims. This book is my attempt to spell out
this idea.
Having clarified my motivation for writing this book I am not going to
mention Indian philosophy any more in the following pages.³ I will not defend
my interpretation of Madhyamaka here, nor will there be any other references
to Indian thinkers, works, schools, or concepts. My aim in this book is to put
together a set of arguments to support a specific set of conclusions, and I am
writing for a reader who is primarily interested to see how the conclusions I try
to establish can be supported by the arguments presented here.
I hope that the philosophical picture I present below is an interesting,
perhaps even an attractive one. Whether its outlines trace the contours of
Nāgārjuna I leave for my readers to decide.
Oxford, Buddha Pūrnima 2019
_
J.C.W.

² Westerhoff 2017. ³ With one exception: Chapter 3, n. 28.

Introduction

The argument in the following pages will look at a series of challenges to Four
increasingly more fundamental aspects of the notion of a real world. The challenges.
discussion begins by an investigation of reasons for the presumed certainty
of the existence of the external, mind-independent world around us, a world
containing material objects such as shoes, and ships, and sealing-wax, biological
organisms, such as cabbages, and persons, such as kings. In Chapter 1 I consider
a selection of arguments directed against the existence of such an external world.
The chapter focuses on the discussion of different theories of perception (naïve
realism, disjunctivism, representationalism) and the ontologies they involve.
I argue that ultimately a kind of brain-based representationalism works best as
a theory of perception but that this, somewhat surprisingly, also undermines the
justification of a mind-independent world of material objects.
A natural place of retreat once the reality of the mind-independent world
has been challenged is that of the certainty of our inner world, a world which,
we assume, is perfectly transparent to us and over which we have complete
control, which provides a sharp contrast with an external world of which we
have limited knowledge, and which frequently resists our attempts to influence
it. Many of the arguments against the existence of the external world presented
in this chapter are extremely well-known, and in many cases as old as the
discipline of philosophy itself. In Chapter 2 I consider a set of somewhat less
familiar arguments against the existence of the kind of internal world we have
just described. Amongst other things I look at various arguments critical of
introspective certainty and conclude that a foundation in the internal world
remains elusive: our introspective capacities do not give us any more of a secure
grasp of the world than the theories of perception discussed in the first chapter.
Supposing these arguments are successful, or at least challenge our belief in
the existence of a world inside, where would we retreat from here? If both the
external and the internal world turn out to be less solid than we initially
thought, one thing we can still hold on to is the certainty that something is
real, even if the external world is not, and even if we and our internal world are not.
This, of course, is the belief in the existence of an ultimate foundation that grounds
all existence. We will consider a series of challenges to this idea in Chapter 3,
evaluating possible arguments for the existence of such a foundation, and describ-
ing attempts to establish its opposite, a non-foundational view of reality.
If the anti-foundationalist turns out to have the better arguments on his side
it looks as if we can close the debate here, and conclude that at the end of the
day the word has a non-well-founded structure. We could do this, if it didn’t

The Non-existence of the Real World. Jan Westerhoff, Oxford University Press (2020). © Jan Westerhoff.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198847915.001.0001
 xxxii 

turn out that there are substantial problems with the idea of a final, ultimately
true theory of the world. In the last, fourth chapter I look at a variety of
arguments (connected with the coherence theory of truth, semantic context-
ualism, and the denial of absolutely general quantification) that suggest that
the idea of a foundational theory of the world is as problematic as that of an
ontological foundation. From this it follows that if there cannot be an ultim-
ately true theory then it also cannot be ultimately true that the world has a non-
well-founded structure.
We are now left with an interesting problem, for it appears as if the theory of
the non-existence of the real world we defend here cannot be a final theory
either. The chapter closes with a discussion of this final problem, together with
some reflection on the implications of the denial of ultimately true theories for
the ontological or philosophical enterprise more generally.
Putnam on Another way of contextualizing the discussion in this book is by considering
realism. it as a reaction to various claims of metaphysical realism. Hilary Putnam
characterizes metaphysical realism as a conjunction of three claims:⁴
1. a mind-independence claim (‘the world consists of some fixed totality of
mind-independent objects’);
2. a unique true theory claim (‘there is exactly one true and complete
description of “the way the world is” ’);
3. a correspondence claim (‘truth involves some sort of correspondence relation
between words or thought-signs and external things and sets of things’).

This book considers arguments that challenge all three claims. Chapter 1
looks at reasons that try to undermine the ontological assumption of an
external world. Our purpose is not epistemological; we are not trying to find
out whether there might be reasons to doubt the existence of an external world,
reasons that undermine our claim that we can have any knowledge of such a
world. We are interested in examining reasons why there may not be such a world.
The question of the ultimately true theory of the world is raised in the final
chapter (Chapter 4). We consider a variety of reasons that appear to show that
the assumption of such a theory may be more problematic than we are usually
happy to assume.
The issue of correspondence is raised in Chapter 3. In fact we are looking at
a more general form of this claim. Instead of considering the issue whether
there needs to be any correspondence between words and things, we investigate
whether there is any necessity for representational theories to be grounded in
the non-representational. Such necessity is expressed by the claim that for

⁴ Putnam 1981: 49.

  xxxiii

linguistic items to be meaningful at all it is necessary that following down the

route of ‘means that’ will not continue to lead us from definitions to defin-
itions, but will at some level terminate in something that is part of the world,
not simply part of its description. This claim is obviously weaker than the
correspondence claim; the correspondence claim needs to establish that there
is a specific relation between words and things (a kind of structural similarity or
some such), while the weaker thesis of semantic foundation we are looking at
here just needs to make sure that there is some way in which the words link up
with the things. We first set out to argue that semantic non-foundationalism is
a consistent position (i.e. that there is no contradiction entailed in assuming
that representations only refer to other representations), and then consider
reasons for why one might consider this view in fact to be true.
The one dimension of metaphysical realism that Putnam’s three conjuncts
do not cover is realism about the inner world, the claim that looking inside our
own mind acquaints us with certain knowledge of an inner world and its
inhabitants, a collection consisting of our thoughts, beliefs, memories, as well
as the central point around which all of these revolve, our self. This is a natural
point of refuge in response to challenges of claims concerning the existence of
an external world. What is rarely realized in the debates between realism and
the various forms of idealism that some of its critics espouse is that the claims
about the existence of an internal world do not rest on a more secure basis than
those about the outer objects they are supposed to replace. Chapter 2 looks at
various arguments for the claim that any trust we may place in an inner realm
of certainty is in all likelihood without foundation.
 1
The Non-existence of the
External World

1.1 Arguing about the External World

§1 Denying the Existence of an External World
Philosophical debates about the external world usually arise in the context of The ontological
problem of the
epistemology. Such debates concern the question to which extent our beliefs external world.
about the external world are justified or by what routes we could achieve
knowledge of the external world. This chapter is not a contribution to this
debate. I am concerned with the ontological problem of the external world, i.e.
with the question of whether there is such a thing in the first place.¹
In particular, I want to look at some arguments against the existence of an Externality
external world. Let me hasten to add that by the denial of the external world equals mind-
independence.
I do not mean scenarios such as Berkeleyian idealism, where all seemingly
external objects are really mental entities existing in the mind of God. For
sure, external objects comprise items such as teacups, galaxies, or electrons. But
by ‘external’ I mean the more general property of an object’s existing without
depending on human interests or concerns. According to this understanding of
externality, platonistically understood mathematical structures and abstract
objects, as well as divine ideas count as external objects. By the denial of an
external world I therefore mean a denial of objects that exist independent of
human interests, concerns, and cognitive activities,² and according to this under-
standing Berkeleyian idealism counts as a theory that endorses external objects.³

¹ The epistemological and ontological questions are, though closely connected, to some extent
independent of one another. A positive answer to the ontological problem does not yet imply that we
have any knowledge of the external world (it might be cognitively inaccessible to us), while a negative
answer does not force us to believe that we could not in some sense still be epistemically justified in
our beliefs about such a world (though this kind of epistemic justification would not involve truth).
² What about other minds? Do they count as external objects? See Chapter 2, note 151.
³ Thus, by the externality of an entity I mean its objectivity. Whether the idea of objective
existence is inextricably intertwined with the notion of spatiality is a problem that has been
discussed since Kant. For a modern discussion of this matter see Strawson 1966, part 2; Bennett
1966, chapter 2; Evans 1985; van Cleve 2006.

The Non-existence of the Real World. Jan Westerhoff, Oxford University Press (2020). © Jan Westerhoff.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198847915.001.0001
   -    

How could we We might wonder how we could possibly establish the non-existence of the
deny its exist- external world. For even if we suppose that we are able to explain everything we
ence in the first
place? want to explain in terms of objects that depend on human interests, external
and hence objectively existent entities could still exist. They could be, like the
Kantian noumenon, wholly inaccessible to human epistemic endeavours. Of
course such noumena could not be established in experiential terms: the world
would look exactly the same whether or not such entities existed. Yet it seems
that there is no argument we can come up with that would rule out the
existence of such cognition-transcending noumena.
The external While this objection has some force, it is important to note that we should be
world must do reluctant to allow entirely idle wheels into our account of what there is. If we
some
explanatory accept some entity such as a ‘world behind the appearances’ it should do some
work. theoretical or explanatory work, yet if the world is exactly the same in the
presence and in the absence of such an entity,⁴ it cannot do any such work.⁵
We need more of a reason for postulating something’s existence than the claim
that for all we know (even for all we could ever know) such a thing might exist.
§2 The Example of Mathematical Platonism
A parallel Consider the example of mathematical Platonism. Suppose for the sake of
(unsatisfactory) argument that we are able to show that all we want to explain about mathem-
argument for
Platonism. atics can be explained without referring to a world of necessarily existent
objects outside of time and space (by appealing to a variety of formalism,
say). Suppose further that we can argue that platonic objects could not possibly
play a part in how we know mathematical truths (for example because all our
epistemic functions involve causal processes, and entities outside of space and
time could not be causal relata). The defender of Platonism could still dig in his
heels, and accept that even though we do not know that 7 + 5 = 12 because we
intuit the identity relation between a set of abstract objects, a number and a
pair of numbers connected by the addition function, but because we have
accepted certain rules for manipulating marks on paper, while maintaining
that these abstract objects still exist. He could claim this while also accepting
that the presence or absence of these objects does not make any difference to
our ability to acquire mathematical knowledge, and if, per impossibile, they
were all going to vanish, we would still have the same mathematical knowledge.

⁴ Colyvan (2000: 89) points out that entities that do not stand in dependence relations with any
other entities (generalizing the notion of entities that do not stand in causal relations with any other
entities, on which see Colyvan 1998) are ‘metaphysically dubious’. See also Bliss 2019: 363.
⁵ Kant, of course, does not claim that there is any observational evidence for things in
themselves, but rather that because we can have knowledge of the world at all, we must accept a
necessary pre-condition of such knowledge, namely that there are noumena. This presupposes that
it is impossible to have just the phenomena without things in themselves that underlie them. We
will come back to this point in Section 1.3 C of this chapter.
  -     

We can probably agree that this defence of Platonism is hopeless. The mere
postulation of an external world in the presence of arguments that such a world
would not be required to explain the perception of the world we do have would
not fare much better.

1.2 Three Arguments in Support

of an External World
In the following pages I want to examine some arguments that appear to
support postulating the existence of an external world, in order to show that
all of these arguments face significant problems. I first want to look at the claim
that the appearance of externality gives us reason to postulate the existence of
an external world that appears in this way, and secondly consider the argument
that the necessity to account for the difference between illusory and veridical
states forces us to adopt some form of belief in an external world.
Thirdly, I shall consider arguments based on the fact that the most popular
kinds of epistemic theories, direct realism and representationalism, both pos-
tulate the existence of an external world. I will try to argue that because neither
theory can really assume more than the bare existence of such a world (without
being able to say much about what this world would be like in itself) we might
have better reasons for adopting an epistemological picture that does not
presuppose the existence of an external world. If our assessment of the
problematic status of these arguments is correct it appears as if the main
motivations for postulating such a world fall away, and that that the notion
of an external world understood as a collection of entities existing independent
of human interests and concerns is one we would best do without.

A The Appearance of Externality

§3 There Appears to be an External World
What is the chief reason for our belief in an external world? The answer seems
to be obvious. The teacup I see standing on the table in front of me strikes me
as something external, as something that exists independently of my epistemic
contact with it (it is there whether or not I look at it), and independently of my
interests and concerns (whether or not I want the teacup to be on the table does
not make a difference for my seeing it). The simplest explanation for this,
I conclude, is that there is in fact an external teacup.
Yet the postulation of an external world does not seem to be necessary just to The appearance
explain this appearance: dreams and hallucinations can represent objects in the of externality is
not sufficient.
very same way. A dreamed teacup (lucid dreams aside) will also appear as
independent of my perceiving it in the dream, and as the impression of
   -    

externality can thus demonstrably be caused by entities that are not external,
appeals to this phenomenology cannot be a sufficient ground for postulating
the existence of an external world.
The Moorean One might object, however, that the appearance of the existence of external
gambit.
objects is all that is really needed to settle the matter. This would be following
the lines of G.E. Moore’s argument,⁶ pointing out that our belief in the
existence of the external world is more secure than any empirical observations,
or any conclusion of philosophical arguments. Belief in the existence of an
external world is so entrenched in our web of belief that we would be willing to
revise any number of other beliefs in the web in order to keep this belief stable.
Peter Unger describes this response as the
Moorean gambit of clutching onto common sense at the expense of anything else, most
especially any philosophical reasoning. According to this way of thinking it is always
most appropriate to reply to philosophical challenges as follows. We are more certain
that there are tables than of anything in the contrary philosophic reasoning. Hence,
while we may never be able to tell what is wrong with the reasoning, at least one thing
must be wrong with it.⁷

Why the Unger points out that this reply is ‘extremely dogmatic’. It is also extremely
Moorean gambit
is unsatisfactory.
irrational. The holding on to certain beliefs no matter what contrary evidence
is presented to us is more characteristic of certain forms of mental illness than
of the exercise of reason. (This does not contradict the fact that, as passengers
in Neurath’s boat, we have to hold on to some beliefs as fixed—there is just no
justification for saying that we can tell in advance which beliefs these are, or
whether they always have to be the same.) In addition, there is no assurance
that our initial, commonsensical assumptions we use to jettison a given
philosophical argument are not of the same kind as, for example, the com-
monsensical assumptions that through any point only one parallel to a given
line can be drawn, or that two events that are simultaneous for me are also
simultaneous for everybody else.

B Distinguishing Veridical and Illusory States

§4 We Need to Explain the Difference between Veridical
and Illusory States
Fortunately the appearance of external objects is not the only consideration
the defender of the external world can bring to the table. Instead of
arguing that the external world is posited in order to account for a specific
phenomenological datum, he might propose that we want to postulate an

⁶ Moore 1939. ⁷ Unger 2006a: 10. See also 2006b: 41.

  -     

external world because we need to account for the difference between

qualitatively identical illusory and veridical perceptions. We may not be able to
tell from the inside, while dreaming or while suffering from a hallucination that
our perception is illusory, but there is still a fact to the matter that it is illusory,
because illusory perceptions do not link up in the right (causal) way with the
external world, while perceptions in the non-hallucinatory waking state do.
Consider situations in which we are deceived about what is going on around
us. We dream we are fighting a ferocious tiger but are in fact sleeping
peacefully in bed; we hallucinate persons after taking certain kinds of drugs; Illusion as a
we grasp for a bunch of grapes in a trompe l’oeil painting, avoid a puddle on the contrastive
concept.
road that is merely a mirage on a hot summer’s day, feel cramps in a phantom
limb that has been amputated long ago. We can only conceptualize these
situations as illusory by contrasting them with situations in which we are not
deceived, when we are attacked by a real tiger, encounter a real person, and so
on.⁸ The difference involved is an ontological difference; in one case we are
confronted with an entity that forms part of the external world, in the other we
are simply interacting with a mind-made object. The fact that there are illusory
situations appears to give us a good reason for postulating the existence of an
ontological watershed that accounts for a situation being illusory or it being
real. This watershed is the distinction between what is part of the external
world, and what is not.
What kind of difference can we use to tell veridical and illusory perceptions 3 differences
apart, if they do not differ in terms of their qualitative appearance? Three kinds between illusory
and true
appear to be most important. perceptions.

§5 () 
First of all illusions are less coherent with the remainder of our perceptions
than veridical perceptions are. We fight a tiger in a dream and just when it Veridical
starts to attack us we wake up. The tiger has disappeared. Such a fortunate perceptions line
up with one
outcome rarely ensues when a real tiger is involved. We grasp for the grapes another.
and touch a canvas, even though usually what looks like a grape also feels like a
grape. We perceive pain in a phantom arm but can at the same time see that
there is no arm where we feel the pain. Veridical perceptions usually line up
neatly with one another, deceptive perceptions do not tend to do this.
A plausible reason for this difference in coherence is that out of the pair of
veridical and illusory perceptions only one is structurally similar to a collection
of objects and thereby succeeds in representing it. The objects themselves are
coherent (Australians aside we don’t usually assume there to be inconsistencies

⁸ As Gilbert Ryle (1964: 94) pointed out, we can only conceptualize counterfeit coinage on the
basis of real coinage.
   -    

in things, but only in the representations of things) and so structural similarity

ensures the coherence of representations. The deceptive type of perception fails
to be coherent because it is devoid of such anchors within a coherent structure.
Being thus unconstrained it can present things in any way it likes, including
inconsistent ways.

§6 () 
Secondly, deceptions are directly available only to us. Nobody else sees the
Veridical dream-tiger or feels the phantom arm, while real tigers and real arms can be
perceptions can
be shared.
perceived by other people as well. Trompe l’oeil paintings (at least those
involving perspectives in a substantial way) are notorious for being fully
deceptive only from one vantage point. To the person standing right next to
us the painted nature of the scene is generally quite obvious. Real grapes, on the
other hand, look convincing from a multitude of perspectives.
Oliver Sacks regards this as the key difference between veridical and illusory
perceptions:
Perceptions are, to some extent, shareable – you and I can agree that there is a tree; but if
I say, ‘I see a tree there,’ and you see nothing of the sort, you will regard my ‘tree’ as a
hallucination, something concocted by my brain or mind [ . . . ].⁹

That certain appearances can appear to more than one subject, while others
are restricted to a single perceiver strongly suggests that we are dealing with
two very different kinds of things here, and thus supports the idea of an
ontological difference between what deceptive and what non-deceptive per-
ceptions present.

§7 () 
Veridical Finally, real things are efficacious. A real tiger can kill, the dream tiger cannot.
perceptions
Real water can quench our thirst or water our lawn, unlike water from a
work.
mirage. A phantom hand cannot grasp anything. It is hard not to attribute
this difference in efficacy to a fundamental ontological distinction between the
real and the deceptive, that is to the fact that the real objects possess some
power which their deceptive counterparts lack. The presence of such power
seems to be the best explanation for the ability of real water to quench our
thirst, while its deceptive counterpart fails to do so.
§8 The Three Differences as an Argument for the External World
It therefore seems to be that a good way of spelling out the difference between
illusory and veridical perceptions is in terms coherence, intersubjectivity,

⁹ 2012b: ix.
  -     

and efficacy. The simplest explanation of why these three properties succeed in
differentiating two kinds of perceptions is that there are two different kinds of
things, separated by an ontological divide,¹⁰ that these perceptions are percep-
tions of. This ontological divide, which entails the existence of an external world,
thus appears to be necessary for being able to draw a distinction between what is
veridical and what is merely illusory, and it is for this reason, the defender of the
external world argues, not merely in order to account for the phenomenology of
externality that we need to postulate the existence of an external world.
Nevertheless, it is not entirely obvious what kind of support the three criteria
of coherence, intersubjectivity, and efficacy actually offer for the postulation of
an ontological divide. Even if the notions of coherence, intersubjectivity, and
efficacy are intricately connected with the veridical/illusory distinction it might
be possible to spell them out without postulating an ontological divide between
the internal and the external. In this case the necessity of drawing the distinc-
tion between what is an illusion and what is not would not be sufficient for
supporting the assumption of the existence of an external world. We will
consider this possibility more closely in the next section.
§9 Difficulties with Coherence
First of all, it is unclear what power considerations of coherence have to
establish the ontological distinction at issue. For the link to be established is
one between the coherence of our perceptions and their correspondence to an
external, mind-independent world, and it is not at all obvious that we can just
move from the former to the latter. There are, after all coherent fairy-tales,¹¹
that is, coherent accounts that fail to have anything corresponding to them.
A second problem with using the notion of coherence as part of a justification
for the introduction of the notion of an external world is that the coherence of
our perception may not be a reflection of any coherent, external world out
there, but might simply be an artefact produced by the perceptual machinery we Coherence as
employ. In this case the coherence of a significant part of our perceptual world is a cognitive
artefact.
not due to any special link with a coherent world, but is simply a result of the fact
that our cognitive mechanisms are aiming for a coherent representation.¹²

¹⁰ This divide may take different forms. It might be taken as a divide between different kinds of
phenomena, internal or external, that these perceptions are perceptions of, or it might be taken as a
divide between experiences which have objects, and experiences which do not.
¹¹ ‘But nowadays most men admit that beliefs must be tested by observation, not merely by the
fact that they harmonize with other beliefs. A consistent fairy-tale is a different thing from truth,
however elaborate it may be.’ (Russell 2009: 304).
¹² Indeed if human perceptual abilities have evolved by natural selection in order to deliver a
coherent representation of the world, it is hardly surprising that this representation is also shared
by all humans. In this case neither its coherence nor its intersubjective nature can serve as evidence
that it faithfully represents objective features of reality. See Hoffman et al. 2015a: 1497.
   -    

If inconsistencies are automatically ‘edited out’ it is hard to draw any ontological

conclusions from the fact that most of our perceptions are coherent.
Change There is a variety of experimental results that support the idea that our
blindness. cognitive mechanisms are coherence-seeking. One simple example of our
spectacular inabilities to perceive inconsistencies is constituted by the difficulty
of detecting blunders in films. Most movies contain significant failures of
consistency (actors changing their outfit mid-scene, Roman slaves wearing
wristwatches) of which the majority of people are completely ignorant.¹³ Not
only are we ‘change blind’ (to use the psychological term), we are also change
blind blind, that is we believe we would spot such inconsistencies but fail to do
so in practice.¹⁴
Choice Such change blindness can have even more puzzling results when it leads to
blindness. a condition known as choice blindness.¹⁵ Here experimental subjects are asked
to choose between two alternatives (such as two types of jams), and, after being
presented with their choice, asked to give reasons for choosing the way they
did. Unknown to them the selection was switched just after their choice, so that
they received the unwanted alternative.¹⁶ In experiments investigating choice
blindness about two-thirds of the subjects fail to notice this, moreover, subjects
of such experiments also subsequently produce introspectively fabricated
reasons for their ‘choice’.¹⁷ It appears as if the pressure towards coherence
does not just affect our perceptions of external objects, but also the relation
between outer actions and inner states (‘I publicly said that I like x, so I must
really like it’).
Reasons: Various factors are behind this cognitive bias towards coherence. One is the
extrapolation extrapolation of past experience that influences our perceptions through
from past
experience. expectations about what we are going to perceive. A case in point here is the
well-known playing-card experiment involving impossible cards.¹⁸ A subject is
briefly shown a variety of playing cards, some of which are doctored (such as a
black king of hearts) and is asked to identify them. In the majority of cases the
subjects did not note the anomalous features of the doctored cards, but rather
perceived them as regular cards. The black king of hearts would thus be

¹³ Chabris and Simons 2010: 52–7.

¹⁴ In one experiment 90 per cent of 297 subjects claimed they would notice an actor’s scarf
changing in a short film shown to them, even though none of the subjects of an earlier experiment
did in fact notice anything. See Levin and Momen 2000.
¹⁵ For an introduction, see Hall and Johansson 2009.
¹⁶ Hall, Johansson, et al. 2010. It is somewhat worrying that our inability to detect such changes
regarding our own preferences does not only seem to affect mundane matters like choices of jam,
but also more weighty issues such as moral choices. See Hall, Johansson, et al. 2012.
¹⁷ Johannson, Hall, et al. 2011.
¹⁸ The experiment is described in Bruner and Postman 1949. It became particularly well known
amongst philosophers after Thomas Kuhn discussed it in 1970: 62–4. See also Horner and Tung
2011.
  -     

identified as a king of spades—not because the subject cannot differentiate

heart-shapes from spade-shapes, but because he sees what he is expecting to
see, namely a regular playing card. Our expectations about what we are going
to perceive can strongly influence what we do in fact perceive. In this way,
having perceived various coherent phenomena in the past, we will expect that
future perceived phenomena are similarly coherent, and this expectation may
make it more likely that we in fact experience them as coherent, whether they
are coherent or not.
Another factor contributing to the cognitive bias towards seeing our per- Reasons:
ceptions as coherent may be the desire to have our perceptions line up with the conformity
with other
perceptions of others around us who regard their perceptions as coherent. In a perceivers.
now classic experiment¹⁹ a group of subjects was shown two cards, one with a
single line on them, the other one with three lines. Their task was to determine
which of the three lines was of the same length as the line on the other card.
All but one subject were instructed in advance to give unanimously wrong
answers from a certain point onwards. The remaining subject thus had two
options: to believe the evidence of his senses and pick the correct line, or to go
with the faulty choice of his co-subjects. The prior probability of making
a mistake in judging the length of the lines was less than 1 per cent, yet in
36.8 per cent of the cases the subject would accept the mistaken majority
opinion. The contrast between the empirical evidence and what the subject
caused himself to belief for the sake of coherence could be quite extreme.
Asch reports that:
we varied the discrepancy between the standard line and the other lines systematically,
with the hope of reaching a point where the error of the majority would be so glaring
that every subject would repudiate it and choose independently. In this we regretfully
did not succeed. Even when the difference between the lines was seven inches, there
were still some who yielded to the error of the majority.²⁰

The perception of coherence may not simply be due to the fact that we (rightly
or wrongly) perceive the world as coherent, but might result from our desire
that our perceptions accord with the judgements of others who do in fact (with
or without justification) take the world to be coherent.
Yet if the coherence of our perceptions results from our epistemic mechan-
isms making them coherent, we could presumably have the same coherent
perceptions we have now even if the world was in fact inconsistent, for example
because it contained contradictions.

¹⁹ Asch 1951. Some later psychologist have argued that the ‘Asch effect’ was a reflection of
conformist tendencies of 1950s America and thus a ‘child of its time’ (Perrin and Spencer 1980).
For more recent attempts to replicate Asch’s experiment see Nicholson, Cole, et al. 1985; Neto 1995.
²⁰ Asch 1955: 34.
   -    

The possibility Graham Priest²¹ gives the (fictional) example of an impossible object in the
of inconsistent form of a box that is simultaneously empty and has something in it. If our
worlds.
world contained such an object, this would constitute a local variation of the
law of non-contradiction, and as such our world would be inconsistent.
Priest’s point is not that his fictional example is actual, but that there is no
good a priori reason to assume that our world does not contain an object of
this kind, i.e. that it is not in fact inconsistent.²² It is not the case that the
presence of an inconsistency in the world entails that everything follows
from everything else, any more than the presence of a contradictory state-
ment in a paraconsistent system of logic entails that every other statement is
entailed by the contradictory statement. In particular, our world would not
be a fundamentally different world if it turned out to be inconsistent. For
Priest there is
absolutely no cogent (in particular, non-question-begging) reason to suppose that there
is an ontological difference between merely possible worlds and impossible worlds – any
more than there is for supposing there to be such a difference between merely possible
worlds which are physically possible and those which are physically impossible. To
differentiate between some nonactual worlds and others would seem entirely
arbitrary.²³

If Priest is right about this, then we cannot simply presuppose the coherence of
our world, nor can we use the coherence of our perceptions as a ground to
postulate the existence of such a coherent world beyond the perceptions. The
coherence of our perceptions, it appears, is unable to function as a support for
the assumption of an external world.
§10 Difficulties with Intersubjectivity
The intersubjectivity criterion relies on the assumption that the veridicality
and shareability of a perception are closely connected. The realm of veridical
perceptions coincides with those that are shareable: if perceptions are not
deceptive they are shareable, and the realm of the illusory coincides with the
subjective: if perceptions are deceptive, they are not shareable.
Yet neither of these two implications is unproblematic. Regarding the
Veridical former, it is not difficult to come up with examples of entirely non-illusory
perceptions perceptions that are nevertheless not shareable. Imagine a peepshow box that
that are not
shareable. displays two monitors inside: one shows a digital clock with the present hour,

²¹ Priest 1997: 575–6.

²² Priest (1997: 581) argues that there is ‘nothing in this definition [of a logically impossible
world as one where a logical truth is false] that precludes the actual world from being logically
impossible’.
²³ Priest 1997: 581.
  -     

minute, second, and decisecond, the other is connected to a random number

generator that presents a new number every decisecond.²⁴ Since the set-up of
the peepshow only allows one person to look inside at one time, the display at
each individual decisecond is not shareable—you can tell others which number
you saw later, but they cannot check it for themselves. Yet there is nothing
deceptive about the scenario, the numbers and times are really displayed and
are clearly visible.
The second implication, that if perceptions are deceptive, they are not Shareable
shareable is equally problematic. It is evident that there are various deceptive perceptions that
are not veridical.
perceptions that are nevertheless intersubjectively accessible. Mirages, rain-
bows, bent sticks under water and mass delusions²⁵ (such as the alleged penis-
shrinkage associated with the koro disease)²⁶ are all deceptive, presenting
things as present that are not there, or as having properties that they do not
in fact have, yet they are all observed by a multiplicity of observers who agree in
considerable detail on what they perceive.
Even in the case of illusory phenomena like after-images that are not
shareable, the fact that they are only accessible to a single perceiver
simply seems to be the result of contingent empirical limitations, and not
of any deep connection between the properties of veridicality and public
accessibility. Without stretching our imagination too much we can think up
a science-fiction scenario in which the afterimage one person perceives
could be simultaneously made available to another person (by ‘reading’
the relevant processes in the first person’s brain, subsequently recreating
them in the second person’s brain). In a world in which such technology
was routinely available, afterimages would be shareable, though this would
not make them any more veridical: just because two persons perceive
it there isn’t a green, glowing patch hovering just in front of them. Veridi-
cality (or its absence) cannot simply be equated with public observability (or
its absence).
§11 Difficulties with Efficacy
The efficacy criterion is unsatisfactory because efficacy is neither a Veridicality and
necessary nor a sufficient condition for being non-deceptive. There are plenty efficacy do not
coincide.
of non-deceptive things that fail to be efficacious (matches that don’t ignite,
pens that don’t write, keys that fail to open locks) while there is also
a variety of deceptive things that are efficacious. A placebo is a fake medicine
that nevertheless manages to heal.²⁷ The nocebo effect occurs when

²⁴ This is a technologically updated version of Wittgenstein’s beetle-in-the-box scenario from

Philosophical Investigations 1.293.
²⁵ See Mackay 1852. ²⁶ Bartholomew 2001: 145–57. ²⁷ Benedetti 2014.
   -    

equally inert preparations cause harm.²⁸ Illusory hands (produced with the
aid of mirrors) are surprisingly effective in curing pain associated with
phantom limbs.²⁹
Perspective- In addition, the supposed lack of efficacy with respect to deceptive phenom-
dependence of
efficacy.
ena is perspective-dependent. It is true that water from a dream cannot water
our waking-world lawn. But the reverse holds as well: when suffering from
recurrent nightmares of a tiger it is no use putting a rifle next to one’s bed,
since real-world rifles are inefficacious when it comes to killing dream-tigers.
But if the efficacy of some phenomenon depends on the context it occurs in
(if something is efficacious-in-a-dream but not efficacious-in-waking-life) it
cannot be taken as indicative of a fundamental ontological distinction as
usually understood. Such distinctions are characterized precisely by not
depending on descriptive context. Whether (say) numbers and electrons
belong to distinct ontological categories is not generally considered as
dependent on the perspective we have on them, but a consequence of their
intrinsic natures.³⁰ But if efficacy is context-dependent it is a fundamentally
relational property, not an intrinsic one, and thus not one indicative of a
substantial ontological division between the efficacious and the non-
efficacious. We cannot then bring it in with the aim of justifying a substantial
ontological division between the veridical and the illusory.
Efficacy and The efficacy of our actions is usually regarded as the strongest reason for
success. believing that our model of the world ‘in here’ lines up in fundamental ways
with the basic structure of the world ‘out there’. If that was not the case, it is
argued, the success of our actions would be a miracle. How would we be able to
successfully fly to the moon, build skyscrapers or cure diseases if we did not
manage to get important aspects of the world right?
Lack of unique One thing to be aware of in this context is what might be called the problem
solutions. of the lacking unique solution. The world might be such that both an
action based on assumption A, and one based on assumption B lead to success,
even though A and B are mutually incompatible. In this case successful
action cannot be considered as a guide to the correctness of the underlying
assumptions.
Cryptanalysis. Consider the example of cryptanalysis. There are numerous ways of
deciphering an encrypted message; any such decryption needs to provide us
at least with a comprehensible plain text and a set of rules that tell us how to get
from plain text to encryption and back. That one is able to produce a decryp-
tion meeting these minimal conditions does not constitute strong evidence that
the plain text produced is in fact the one that was originally encoded. (Consider
the fact that our set of rules could simply be a set of substitution rules, saying

²⁸ Pilcher 2009. ²⁹ Ramachandran and Blakeslee 1998, chapter 3.

³⁰ See, however, Westerhoff 2005: VI: 1–2.
  -     

‘replace the first symbol of the encrypted message by this letter, the second by
this letter and so on’ for all the symbols in the encrypted message.) Of course in
real world cryptanalysis we use subsidiary considerations that manage to rule
out most or all of these alternatives, taking into account which method of
encryption was probably used, what kind of content we suspect the coded
message to contain and so on. Yet the fact remains that the encrypted message
itself does not tell us whether our decryption was successful.³¹
A simpler case is constituted by the ‘Quinean’ crossword puzzle introduced
into the philosophical discussion by Daniel Dennett.³² These are crossword Quinean
puzzles that admit of two different solutions, so that each clue points to at least crossword
puzzles.
two words (with the same number of letters) and the set of all the first words
and the set of all the second words fit together in the way indicated by the
structure of the crossword.³³
Applying different rules to an encrypted piece of text we end up with
different decrypted messages, and some of these we consider as successful
decryptions. Interpreting the clues differently, we arrive at two different ways
of solving a crossword puzzle and may regard one of them as the right solution.
In the same way our interaction with the world results in some effects (it would
be peculiar if it did not) and some of these we consider as successful, others as
failures. But there is nothing in the world and nothing in us that determines
which of the interactions is a successful one, just as there is nothing about two
alternative decryptions that determines conclusively which arrived at the
original plaintext, and nothing in a solution to a Quinean crossword that
settles whether it or its rival is the correct one. If there is a lack of unique
solutions (and there is no reason to suppose that such cases are very rare) then
our successful action floats free of our ability to ‘get the world right’. In fact it is
not even clear what ‘getting the world right’ would mean, or what ‘solving the

³¹ This worry could be generalized. If we conceive of understanding the meaning of a given text
as a form of decryption, the fact that we can attribute a coherent meaning to a text does not imply
that this was the meaning the author had in mind, or that there was any author at all (as opposed to
a sentence-generating algorithm based on a randomizer, for example). Of course the number of
instances where we can attribute two radically different meanings to a substantial body of text are
very small, but this ‘is not because, as a matter of metaphysical fact, there are real meanings in there
(Quine’s “museum myth”), but because the cryptographer’s constraint [“if you can find one
solution to a puzzle, you’ll have found the only solution to the puzzle”] just makes it a vanishingly
small worry. [ . . . ] Intentional interpretation almost always asymptotes in the limit at a single
interpretation, but in the imaginable catastrophic case in which dual interpretations survived all
tests, there would be no deeper fact to settle which was “right”.’ Dennett 2000: 346 (emphases in the
original).
³² Dennett 2013: 175–7.
³³ Needless to say it is very difficult to construct crosswords of this kind having any but the
smallest size (Dennett’s example has a 3-by-3 grid). Yet to make the point that interests us it is not
necessary that every clue in the crossword points at two words. On the day of the presidential
election 1996 the New York Times ran a crossword in which one of the clues asked for the name of
the next president; both CLINTON and BOBDOLE worked as solutions.
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