Berkeley's
Argument and the Perspectivist Fallacy
David
Banach
If you can conceive it possible for one extended
movable substance, or, in general, for any one idea, or anything like an idea,
to exist otherwise than in a mind perceiving it, I shall readily give up the
cause
..................................................
But, say you, surely there is nothing easier than for one to imagine trees, for
instance, in a park, or books existing in a closet, and nobody by to perceive
them. ... but what is all this, I beseech you, more than framing in your mind
certain ideas which you call books and trees, and at the same time omitting to
frame the idea of any one that may perceive them. ... but it does not show that
you can conceive it possible the objects of your thought may exist without the
mind. To make out this, it is necessary that you conceive them existing
unconceived or unthought of, which is a manifest repugnancy. When we do the
utmost to conceive the existence of external bodies we are all the while only
contemplating our own ideas. (George Berkeley, A Treatise Concerning the
Principles of Human Knowledge, I, 22-23: Berkeley 1962, pp. 75-76)
The fact that any conception of a material object is a
representation in the mind does not imply that the object of that conception,
the material object, is also merely an idea in the mind. It is true that any
conception of a material object is an idea in the mind, but it does not follow
from this that the object of that conception is merely in the mind as well.
Conceptions in the mind can be about objects outside of the mind, and it is
commonly thought that Berkeley's argument does not show otherwise. Hence, this
argument, upon which Berkeley is willing to put so much weight, is often
thought to be obviously invalid because it conflates the properties of a
concept with those of the thing the concept represents. I will argue that
Berkeley's argument does not make this mistake and that the argument, while
still fallacious, is more subtle and
powerful than is commonly thought. In
fact, I will argue that it is a form of argument that is common, and
often foundational, in contemporary
thinkers such as Rorty and Putnam, a form of argument I will call the
Perspectivist Fallacy. The purpose of this paper is to show that Berkeley's
argument, properly interpreted, is a strong version of the Perspectivist
Fallacy, to show its similarity to a number of important contemporary
arguments, and to show that all of these arguments are in fact fallacious.
I
The Perspectivist
Fallacy
Before looking directly at
Berkeley's argument, we will need to see exactly what the Perspectivist Fallacy
is and why it is a fallacy. We will then be able to see more clearly how
Berkeley's argument shares the same form as the contemporary arguments of Rorty
and Putnam and how all three are based upon the same error.
The Perspectivist Fallacy is the
argument that representations from particular perspectives cannot be true or
objective, simply because they are perspectival. There is also a stronger
version of the Perspectivist Fallacy which argues that representations from
particular perspectives cannot even refer to or be about objects outside of
that perspective. (This is the version that I shall attribute to Berkeley.)
Before we look at why these types of arguments are fallacies, it will be useful
to look at some examples to see just how prevalent these forms of argument are,
both in common discourse and in contemporary epistemology:
The first and most common of these
The Eternal Why: (Figure 1.) Every representation of reality
is just a representation (R1) and needs further justification. But every
justification is just another representation (R2), which itself needs
justification (R3). In order to determine whether a representation of reality
(R1) is true, we need to represent to ourselves the relation or correspondence
of the representation to the object (R2). But this second representation is
itself merely a representation and its truth must be seen through yet another
representation (R3), and so on.
The five year old's
version:
"Why is the sky blue Daddy? Because different colors of light are absorbed
by the atmosphere to different degrees. But why does air absorb light like that
Daddy? Because it has a certain molecular structure. But why does the structure
absorb light this way Daddy? Because of the nature of light. But why does light
have this nature Daddy? Ask your Mother." Each explanation is merely an
account which does not carry within itself its own justification; hence, the
possibility of a repeated questioning of each account.
Richard Rorty's version: For Rorty, the
representation is language, and philosophy is the attempt to justify our
linguistic statements by elucidating the way in which language relates to the
world. Rorty says in the Preface to Consequences of Pragmatism:
The latter suggestion presupposes that there is
some way of breaking out of language in order to compare it with something
else. But there is no way to think about either the world or our purposes
except by using our language. One can use language to criticize and enlarge
itself, as one can exercise one's body to develop and strengthen and enlarge
it, but one cannot see language-as-a-whole in relation to something else to
which it applies, or for which it is a means to an end. ... Philosophy, the
attempt to say "how language relates to the world" by saying what makes certain sentences true, or
certain actions or attitudes good or rational, is, on this view, impossible.
It is the impossible attempt to
step outside our skins - the traditions, linguistic and other, within which we
do our thinking and self-criticism - and compare ourselves with something
absolute. (Rorty 1983, p. xix)
The attempt to represent the relation between
language and the world to determine if there is a correspondence is itself a
representation and, as such, needs justification from the outside. Rorty
objects to the attempt to use an empirical theory of the relation between
representations and the world as a foundation that will guarantee the
correspondence of our representations to the world. He says:
...
the issue is not adequacy of explanation of fact, but whether a practice of
justification can be given a "grounding" in fact. The question is not
whether human knowledge in fact has "foundations," but whether it
makes sense to suggest that it does - whether the idea of epistemic or moral
authority having a "ground" in nature is a coherent one. (Rorty 1979,
p. 178)
Rorty answers this question in the negative:
"... nothing counts as justification unless by reference to what we
already accept, and ... there is no way to get outside our beliefs and our
language so as to find some test other than coherence." (Rorty 1979, p.
178)
The Meaning of Life: Every particular
action or value can be questioned from some more objective point of view. Every
justification of any value is always from some other point of view which itself
needs justification. What we do now won't matter 100 years from now, and, even
if it did, what matters 100 years from now won't matter from some other point
of view. Every value requires external justification. All values that originate
from within a point of view cannot be objective and require external
justification. (See Nagel, 1986)
"That's Just your
Opinion":There
is no right answer, because every possible answer is just somebody's point of
view. That's just your opinion. (The implication being that simply because it
is an opinion from a particular perspective, it can't be objective or correct.)
Of course, simply calling these
arguments fallacious does not make them so. I will attempt to add some
argumentative sticks and stones to the name calling.
The first obvious problem with
the argument is that it seems to be a non
sequitur. It does not follow directly from the fact that a representation
is from a particular perspective that it cannot be objective. If 'objective'
means reflecting the object and not merely the subject, then the fact that a
representation is perspectival does seem to imply that it cannot be completely objective; but it does not
imply that it cannot be partially objective (i.e., that it reflect the object
in some of its properties or in some aspect of its form). The fact that a
photograph was taken from a particular place with a particular view of the object does not imply that none of
the properties of the photograph are due to, or reflect, the object and not the
point of view or the medium of representation. Most versions of the argument
simply do not follow unless one takes for granted a particular view of what
representations are and how they represent.
Most versions of the fallacy do
in fact take for granted a particular
view of representation and then proceed to show how objective knowledge is
impossible because of the very view of representation they assume. The second
problem with the Perspectivist Fallacy is that it implicitly assumes a very
dubious theory of representation without explicit argument. I call this view
the Physical Model of Representation, because it views mental and perspectival
representation as self-sufficient objects, using the way that physical
objects, such as pictures, can serve as representations as a model. To
understand most versions of the Perspectivist Fallacy we need to look briefly
at this view of representation and how it figures in the arguments of both the
weak and strong versions of the fallacy.
Imagine looking at an object and a physical representation of that object. Take, for example, a statue and the woman it was modelled after. In this case both the object and the representation are contained in the same perception. We perceive their similarities, and we can perceive the correspondences between the statue and the women. This allows us to see, for example, how the elbow of ivory maps onto the elbow of flesh. Thus we can take the ivory as representing the flesh; we project the properties of the woman onto the statue guided by the perceived similarities. The statue represents the woman only in virtue of the complete interpretation of the situation by the observer and the access that he has to both the statue and the woman. (Figure 2) This is a paradigmatic case of physical representation, but it is one that is bound to be incompletely analyzed. It is natural to leave out the part that the observer plays in this situation and attribute the representative qualities of the statue to its similarity to the woman. After all, it is the similarities that guide the projection of the properties of the woman onto the statue. The fact that this projection is an act of the observer, dependent upon his ability to interact perceptually with both the statue and the woman, is easily overlooked. It is this simplified analysis of physical representation that is taken as the paradigm and applied to mental representation.
The
mental image (or the piece of language in modern theories) is seen as a
representation or picture. It is thought to function autonomously, apart from
the action of an interpreting subject and its interaction with an external
object, just as a physical representation seems to. The mental representation
is seen as a mental object that represents in virtue of its own properties.
Instead of seeing representation as a process of interaction between subject
and object and the perspective as the mode or manner in which this interaction
is carried out, the representation is reified into an object and the
perspective on the external world turned into a view of this mental object, not
a view of the external world. Through a
perspective we see only the reified representation not the world; thus,
perspectival representation becomes a veil of ideas separating the subject from
any independent access to the external object.
The
Perspectivist Fallacy is the argument that objective knowledge, and even
reference to external objects, are impossible on this view of
representation. This is completely
true. If we only have direct access to the representation and our internal
image is our experience of
the external object, this image cannot be compared to the external object
through some mind's eye that experiences both the image and the external
object. There is no way to ascertain the correspondence between internal
representation and external object. Every philosophical attempt to ascertain
the correspondence between representation and object can only issue in the
production of yet another mental representation, since all human knowledge is
from a perspective and perspectival knowledge is a view of a representation of
the world, not the world itself. (Figure 3) It is this view of representation
that is behind Rorty's claim that it is impossible to step outside of our skins
(our systems of representation) and that this is what is necessary in order to
have objective knowledge of the world:
It is the impossible attempt to step
outside our skins - the traditions, linguistic and other, within which we do
our thinking and self-criticism - and compare ourselves with something
absolute. (Rorty 1983, p. xix)
As we shall see, this is also the view of
representation that stands behind Berkeley's claim that a representation of an
external object is a contradiction in terms: What we see through perspectives
are mental objects, ideas, not external objects. Berkeley was one of the first
philosophers to realize that when see representations as mental objects without
any intrinsic connection to the external world, they no longer can serve their
representative function. He was the first to employ the strong version of the
perspectivist fallacy, to argue that representations from particular
perspectives cannot even represent or refer to external objects.
II
Berkeley's Argument
Let us look at how Berkeley's
argument involves this stronger version of the Perspectivist Fallacy. As
mentioned above, most interpreters (See Bennett 1971: pp. 137-142, Woolhouse
1988: pp. 118-119, and Jones 1969: pp. 287-288 for examples of this
interpretation and the criticism that follows it.) view the argument upon which
Berkeley was willing to stake the entire issue of the existence of material
objects as some instance of the following argument:
1.
Assume material objects exist, and try to conceive one existing without being
conceived in some thinkers mind.
2. In attempting to conceive a material object existing unconceived, you are
attempting to conceive something that is unconceived. This is a manifest
absurdity.
----------------------
By RAA, material objects don't exist.
They
then usually add this standard criticism of the argument: The argument makes
the obvious confusion between the properties of a concept and the properties of
what it refers to. In conceiving a mountain, I don't have rocks in my head.
Hence, in conceiving something unconceived, my concept is not unconceived, what
it refers to, the external object, is.
The contradiction disappears.
This interpretation and
criticism of the argument, however,
misses the essential point of the argument and its similarity to contemporary
arguments. The contradiction in conceiving a material object existing apart from
a perceiver does not simply lie in the fact that in conceiving of the object
you would become a perceiver of the object through which it would exist as an
idea. In the version of the argument that appears in Three Dialogues between
Hylas and Philonous (Berkeley 1962, pp. 183-192), Hylas is not convinced by
the argument given above and claims that the argument shows merely that we
cannot perceive material objects directly. Only ideas are perceived directly;
material objects are conceived only through the mediation of ideas that
represent external objects through their similarity to them. (Berkeley 1962, p.
187) Thus, although we cannot conceive them directly, Hylas argues that
external objects existing unperceived are at least possible (Berkeley 1962, p.
189). Philonous answers this by demonstrating that we cannot even represent
such objects mediately through our ideas, since our ideas can bear no
similarity to anything but an idea and material objects are by definition
unlike ideas. Berkeley's argument is really an argument that ideas in the mind
cannot even refer to or represent external objects and that, hence, all
attempted talk of external material objects "marks out either a direct
contradiction, or else nothing at all." (George Berkeley, Treatise Concerning
the Principles of Human Knowledge: I, 24. Berkeley 1962, p. 76) The
argument correctly interpreted is the following strong version of the
Perspectivist Fallacy:
The
key premise is the first. If representations are seen as mental objects and
perspectives are seen as views of representations rather than views of external
objects, then the representation can only serve as a representation, can only
refer to something, in virtue of some intrinsic property (similarity for
Berkeley). Berkeley was simply the first to see that if one takes what is
essentially an interaction between a subject and an object and turns it into a
reified entity that is separate from the object, it can no longer fulfill its
function as representing or referring to an external object.
III
Putnam's Version
Hilary Putnam has recently
advanced arguments against the view he calls Metaphysical Realism that have
exactly the same form as Berkeley's argument. They are also strong versions of
the Perspectivist Fallacy. They argue that it is impossible for representations
to represent or refer to external objects outside of the perspective or
conceptual scheme from which they originate. For Putnam, the problem is no
longer the impossibility of a similarity between mental ideas and extra-mental
reality, but the impossibility of independent access to the objects our
language is supposed to refer to or represent. He says in the Introduction to Realism
and Reason:
Early
philosophical psychologists - for example, Hume - pointed out that we do not literally
have the object in our minds. The mind never compares an image or word with an
object, but only with other images, words, beliefs, judgments, etc. The idea of
a comparison of words or mental representations with objects is a senseless
one. So how can a determinate correspondence between words or mental
representations and external objects ever be singled out? (Putnam 1983 p. viii)
Hence
any attempt to philosophically specify the relation between the representation and
the object is just another representation, whose relation to reality itself
needs to be specified. In his presidential address to the APA, "Realism
and Reason," he says:
The
problem, in a way, is traceable back to Occam. Occam introduced the idea that concepts
are (mental) particulars. If
concepts are particulars ('signs'), then any concept we may have of the relation between a sign and its object
is another sign. But it is
unintelligible, from my point of view, how the sort of relation the
metaphysical realist envisages as holding between a sign and its object can be
singled out either by holding up the sign itself ... or by holding up yet another sign... . (Putnam 1976, pp. 126-127)
The
problem is that any attempt to explain how reference is possible must fail
because it will only be more representation or theory. In particular Putnam
makes this argument against using a causal theory of reference to explain how
representation of external objects is possible. In "Realism and
Reason," he says, "Notice that a 'causal' theory of reference is not
(would not be) of any help here: for how 'causes' can uniquely refer is as much
of a puzzle as how 'cat' can, on the metaphysical realist picture."
(Putnam 1976, p.126) And in
"Models and Reality," he adds: "The problem is that adding to
our hypothetical formalized language of science a body of theory entitled
'Causal theory of reference' is just adding more theory." (Putnam 1977, p.18)
The argument, in the end, is the same as Berkeley's: Reference to external objects is impossible.
Try to imagine an account of reference to external objects. In doing so you are
not representing to yourself the reference relationship, but only a
representation or theory of it. Just as you cannot have a concept of a material
object that is not a concept, so you cannot have a theory of reference that is
not a theory.
IV
Conclusion
Both Berkeley's and Putnam's
version of the Perspectivist Fallacy show the strangely self-defeating nature
of the fallacy: Both arguments assume a
view of representation which the arguments that proceed from it show to be
mistaken. The strong version of the Perspectivist Fallacy shows that if
representations are taken as mental or linguistic objects that have no
intrinsic relation to the object they are supposed to represent or refer to,
and if perspectives are seen to be views of representations not interactions
with or relations to external objects, then representation or reference will be impossible. That is, representations
will not function as representations.
It is no surprise that when you
mistake a relation or interaction between two objects for a third object (and
this is the fundamental error involved in the Perspectivist Fallacy), you will
no longer be able to explain the relation in terms of this reified object. The
Perspectivist Fallacy is similar to reifying the interaction between a bat and
a ball (call it the bat-ball relation) and then arguing that it is impossible
to hit a baseball with a bat because
the bat-ball relation (now seen as an object, not a relation) must be
related to the bat and the ball by two other relations (the bat-(bat-ball
relation) relation and the
ball-(bat-ball relation) relation!) which must themselves be related to their
relata by third relations, which must themselves be related ... Of course, this
is also the similar to the third man argument, which analyzes the similarity
between two objects as yet another object, whose similarity to the first two
objects must itself be explained by another object, and so on. The
Perspectivist Fallacy assumes a model of representation that views the act
of representing as a reified object and, hence, makes reference and
representation impossible. It then goes
on to argue that reference to extra-mental objects is impossible. The
conclusion is not surprising, since the view of representation upon which the
argument is based is self-defeating.
The same holds of the view of objectivity of perspectival
knowledge involved in the weaker versions of the Perspectivist Fallacy. Objectivity requires that the representation
reflect the object and not the perspective from which the representation
arises. But since a perspective is seen as a view of the representation only
and not a relation to the object, every perspectival representation can reflect
or represent only another representation or perspective, not reality itself.
The attempt to justify our representations only results in more
representations.
Since any perspectival
representation is subjective, objectivity can only be reached by multiplying
the number of representations we have of an object in order to broaden our view
and to reduce the biasing influences of any one perspective. The aim is to
reduce the perspectival nature of our representation. To get a representation
that takes into account all views and is, hence, a view from nowhere in
particular. That this model of objectivity is self-defeating can be seen from
the following analogy:
The Amazing
Perspectivist Platform: Imagine a platform being built to reduce the amount of load
carried by any one of its supporting beams. In order to reduce the load carried
by any particular beam upon which the platform rests, the number of beams is
increased. Imagine also that as each beam that is added, we whittle a little
bit of wood off of all the beams, including the one we add. As more beams are
added the strength of each beam is decreased, but this is OK because the
portion of the load that each carries is also decreased as we add more. This
lessens the load on each beam and decreases the degree to which the platform
depends on each beam. The ideal limit of this process is obvious. As you add
more and more beams the width of the beams and the weight supported by each
will approach zero. This is an attempt to get a platform held up by so many
beams that it isn't held up by anything at all.
This
analogy makes clear the the fundamental incoherence involved in the view of
objectivity assumed by the Perspectivist Fallacy. It is an attempt to get a representation that does not reflect
any perspective or medium, a God's eye view. It is the attempt to get a
non-perspectival perspective, a representation that isn't a representation.
This is the project Rorty and Putnam criticize, and it is not surprising that
the project is impossible since it assumes a self-defeating model of
objectivity.
The analysis of the problems
involved in the Physical model of Representation are indeed correct. But they
should lead us to question this model of representation rather than to question
the possibility of reference and representational knowledge themselves. When a
view of representation implies that representation is impossible, it is time to
get a new theory of representation, not to conclude that representation is
really impossible. The Perspectivist Fallacy assumes, without argument, that a
certain view of representation is true and that certain conclusions about the
possibility of knowledge and reference then follow. I have tried to suggest
that the view of representation that is assumed mistakes what is essentially a
relation or interaction between the
subject and the object for a self-subsisting object. Even if I do not at
this time explain what a view of representation that did not make this mistake
would be like, the minimum conclusion that must be drawn from this analysis is
that it is incumbent upon those who employ the Perspectivist Fallacy to make
explicit the assumptions they are making about the nature of representation and
to defend them. The rhetorical point of the comparison to Berkeley was that
most contemporary proponents of the Perspectivist Fallacy would repudiate
Berkeley's version of the argument because they no longer share Berkeley's
assumptions about the nature of representation. Yet, their arguments are
directed at this view of representation and their general conclusions about the possibility of objective knowledge
and reference depend upon the assumption that this view of representation is
correct. My claim is that their arguments merely show that a Physical Model of
Representation is untenable, not that representation of external objects itself
is impossible.
The Perspectivist fallacy
ignores the possibility that representation is an act, not a property of a
physical object in isolation from a representer. To show that it is a fallacy I
need not demonstrate that such a view of representation is true; I need only
show that it is possible. If representing is an act in which we directly
interact with the world, particular perspectives must not only become bearers
of knowledge, but the foundations of all knowledge. Perspectives are not veils
of ideas, they are vistas onto the external world. Perspectives are not
windowless rooms from which there is no escape. They are themselves windows on
the world. They give a limited and incomplete view of the world, but a view
none the less.
REFERENCES
Bennett,
Jonathan. 1971. Locke, Berkeley, Hume: Central Themes. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1971.
Berkeley,
George. 1962. A Treatise Concerning
the Principles of Human Knowledge and Three Dialogues Between Hylas and
Philonous. Lasalle: Open Court, 1962.
Jones, W.T. 1969. A
History of Western Philosophy,Volume III: Hobbes to Hume (2cnd
edition). New York: Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich, Inc., 1969.
Nagel, Thomas. 1986. The
View from Nowhere. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. See especially
Chapter XI, pp. 214-222.
Putnam,
Hilary. 1976. "Realism and
Reason." In Meaning and the Moral Sciences. London: Routledge and
Kegan Paul, 1978.
1977. "Models and Reality." In Realism and Reason. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1983, pp. 1-25.
1983. Realism and Reason. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
Rorty,
Richard. 1979. Philosophy and the
Mirror of Nature. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979.
1983. Consequences of Pragmatism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1983.
Woolhouse,
R.S. 1988. A History of Western Philosophy, Volume 5: The Empiricists.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.