Reading Group: Stroud, "The Charm of Naturalism"
Stroud poses what he calls 'restrictive naturalists' with a dilemma. Here it is in the case of colour (he also poses it for ethics, maths and logic):
"Exclude coloured objects in general from the world, and you are in danger of losing the capacity to recognise perceptions of and beliefs about the colours of things. Include coloured objects, and the contents of those perceptions and beliefs no longer go beyond what is in the natural world." (30).
His point seems to be that a 'restrictive naturalist' cannot account for the contents of our beliefs about those things that such a form of naturalism seeks to exclude from the world (e.g. colours). If colours are allowed to be in the natural world, then we no longer have a 'restrictive naturalism' but an 'open-minded naturalism'. And that, he thinks, wouldn't be a substantive version of naturalism at all. Everybody would count as a naturalist if that was what naturalism was.
Before I say what Stroud's case is, and what I think is wrong with it, I want to mention an astonishing claim he makes about naturalised epistemology. This is his claim that, unless some version of ontological naturalism is already in the picture, then epistemological naturalism lacks any significant content:
"Even [ontological] supernaturalists like Plantinga, Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, and others would still count as "naturalized epistemologists" in at least one current sense that has been given to that phrase. Epistemology has been said to be "naturalized or naturalistic" as long as it tries to explain only how human beings do in fact arrive at their beliefs rather than how they ought to arrive at them. If that is enough to make an epistemology naturalistic, then virtually every philosopher in history has been a naturalized epistemologist. They have all been concerned to describe and understand the human condition as it is, to see and explain how we actually get all the knowledge we've obviously got." (24)
It's pretty obvious where this goes wrong. First, Stroud slides from 'belief' to 'knowledge'. Naturalised epistemologists describe how we get beliefs, Descartes et. al. describe how we get knowledge. The difference, it needs hardly be said, is significant. But, second, the fact that Descartes et. al. seek to, "explain how we actually get all the knowledge we've obviously got" is not yet enough to qualify them as naturalized epistemologists even on the interpretation of the view that Stroud discusses. For that view maintains that epistemologists should not be concerned with questions of how we ought to form beliefs. But the suggestion that this was not part of Descartes' project is very much in need of argument.
The passage that I have been criticising occurs in a relatively peripheral part of the paper, which is in the main concerned with ontological naturalism. I mention it because I think it is a particularly clear instance of a slip that occurs later on.
So, back to the main dilemma. In particular, to the first horn. Here's what Stroud says about the case of colour:
"Since he [the 'restrictive naturalist'] holds that there is no such fact as an object's being coloured, he cannot specify the contents of those perceptions and beliefs [the ones of/about colours] in terms of any conditions that he believes actually hold in the world." (29)
Here's the general point:
"What human beings think, feel, and care about must be fully expressible somehow within the restricted resources available in the naturalist's world." (27)
Stroud seems to think that once we have eliminated the problematic entities we will not be able to give an account of the contents of our beliefs about those entities. But he seems to assume that such contents would need to be accounted for by facts which, let's suppose, are true propositions. But, surely, nobody thinks that contents should be understood as truths, rather they are truth-conditions. As such, beliefs can have contents that concern things that don't exist. If Stroud were right, then an surely an argument could be mounted to the effect that there must be phlogiston, since we have phlogiston beliefs.
What has gone wrong, it seems to me, is that Stroud has once more slid from talking about beliefs to talking about knowledge. The content of a belief is a truth-condition, the content of knowledge is a truth. Exactly the same slide occurs in the discussion of ethics where error theory is not mentioned as a possibility for the naturalist to take. (He presupposes the falsity of expressivism as an alternative account of the content of ethical beliefs. But we can grant him for the sake of argument). The same happens in the case of maths and logic, where the presupposition of knowledge is made explicit.
But perhaps error theories are ruled out because his is a 'regressive transcendental argument', one that presupposes knowledge then argues that such and such conditions must hold, i.e. there must be colours, etc. Perhaps it is reasonable to presuppose so much. Even still I want to dig my heels in, for Stroud doesn't give us any reason to suppose that other accounts of content are unavailable.What the naturalist requires, on Stroud's way of setting things up, is an account of content that allows us to have knowledge that appears to refer to things (better, kinds of things) that do not really exist. Obviously the plausibility of any such story will depend very much on the domain under discussion. But it seems to me that this should be taken as a challenge for the naturalist to take up rather than, as Stroud wants to suggest, a reason for thinking that naturalism is bound to fail.
"Exclude coloured objects in general from the world, and you are in danger of losing the capacity to recognise perceptions of and beliefs about the colours of things. Include coloured objects, and the contents of those perceptions and beliefs no longer go beyond what is in the natural world." (30).
His point seems to be that a 'restrictive naturalist' cannot account for the contents of our beliefs about those things that such a form of naturalism seeks to exclude from the world (e.g. colours). If colours are allowed to be in the natural world, then we no longer have a 'restrictive naturalism' but an 'open-minded naturalism'. And that, he thinks, wouldn't be a substantive version of naturalism at all. Everybody would count as a naturalist if that was what naturalism was.
Before I say what Stroud's case is, and what I think is wrong with it, I want to mention an astonishing claim he makes about naturalised epistemology. This is his claim that, unless some version of ontological naturalism is already in the picture, then epistemological naturalism lacks any significant content:
"Even [ontological] supernaturalists like Plantinga, Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, and others would still count as "naturalized epistemologists" in at least one current sense that has been given to that phrase. Epistemology has been said to be "naturalized or naturalistic" as long as it tries to explain only how human beings do in fact arrive at their beliefs rather than how they ought to arrive at them. If that is enough to make an epistemology naturalistic, then virtually every philosopher in history has been a naturalized epistemologist. They have all been concerned to describe and understand the human condition as it is, to see and explain how we actually get all the knowledge we've obviously got." (24)
It's pretty obvious where this goes wrong. First, Stroud slides from 'belief' to 'knowledge'. Naturalised epistemologists describe how we get beliefs, Descartes et. al. describe how we get knowledge. The difference, it needs hardly be said, is significant. But, second, the fact that Descartes et. al. seek to, "explain how we actually get all the knowledge we've obviously got" is not yet enough to qualify them as naturalized epistemologists even on the interpretation of the view that Stroud discusses. For that view maintains that epistemologists should not be concerned with questions of how we ought to form beliefs. But the suggestion that this was not part of Descartes' project is very much in need of argument.
The passage that I have been criticising occurs in a relatively peripheral part of the paper, which is in the main concerned with ontological naturalism. I mention it because I think it is a particularly clear instance of a slip that occurs later on.
So, back to the main dilemma. In particular, to the first horn. Here's what Stroud says about the case of colour:
"Since he [the 'restrictive naturalist'] holds that there is no such fact as an object's being coloured, he cannot specify the contents of those perceptions and beliefs [the ones of/about colours] in terms of any conditions that he believes actually hold in the world." (29)
Here's the general point:
"What human beings think, feel, and care about must be fully expressible somehow within the restricted resources available in the naturalist's world." (27)
Stroud seems to think that once we have eliminated the problematic entities we will not be able to give an account of the contents of our beliefs about those entities. But he seems to assume that such contents would need to be accounted for by facts which, let's suppose, are true propositions. But, surely, nobody thinks that contents should be understood as truths, rather they are truth-conditions. As such, beliefs can have contents that concern things that don't exist. If Stroud were right, then an surely an argument could be mounted to the effect that there must be phlogiston, since we have phlogiston beliefs.
What has gone wrong, it seems to me, is that Stroud has once more slid from talking about beliefs to talking about knowledge. The content of a belief is a truth-condition, the content of knowledge is a truth. Exactly the same slide occurs in the discussion of ethics where error theory is not mentioned as a possibility for the naturalist to take. (He presupposes the falsity of expressivism as an alternative account of the content of ethical beliefs. But we can grant him for the sake of argument). The same happens in the case of maths and logic, where the presupposition of knowledge is made explicit.
But perhaps error theories are ruled out because his is a 'regressive transcendental argument', one that presupposes knowledge then argues that such and such conditions must hold, i.e. there must be colours, etc. Perhaps it is reasonable to presuppose so much. Even still I want to dig my heels in, for Stroud doesn't give us any reason to suppose that other accounts of content are unavailable.What the naturalist requires, on Stroud's way of setting things up, is an account of content that allows us to have knowledge that appears to refer to things (better, kinds of things) that do not really exist. Obviously the plausibility of any such story will depend very much on the domain under discussion. But it seems to me that this should be taken as a challenge for the naturalist to take up rather than, as Stroud wants to suggest, a reason for thinking that naturalism is bound to fail.
Labels: Naturalism
posted by Joel at 8:51 pm
9 Comments:
One passage that struck me is right after Joel’s quote from p. 29:
‘If he could [specify the content of illusory perceptions in terms of conditions that he believes to hold in the world] , that would amount to believing that there are coloured things in the world after all. Scientific naturalism denies that.’ (p. 29)
Stroud states here that the naturalist has to share false beliefs about colour if he can specify the content of illusory perceptions. Naturalism traditionally denies that coloured things exist in the world. But it is not clear why naturalism should also disallow false beliefs about those things. As beliefs are sufficient for specifications of content, however, the naturalistic denial of the existence of coloured things in the world does not affect the specification of the content that illusory perceptions have.
So far, this is just a more wordy restatement of Joel’s point about phlogiston-beliefs. Stroud appears to see a connection between naturalistic ontology and belief content that is implausibly strong. What, however, about an implication of the quoted sentence -- that naturalism denies (or does not allow) that the contents of colour (or value) beliefs can be specified on the grounds of colour (or value) beliefs; rather, that to specify the content of these beliefs the naturalist needs true beliefs?
I admit that this looks a bit concocted. Perhaps this reading can shed some light on error theory as a naturalistic option, however. On this second reading, naturalism would hold that false beliefs (about colour, value or abstracta) are not sufficient to specify the content of like beliefs (about colour, value or abstracta). More is needed to specify these contents because to make naturalistic sense, the specification must include the erroneous character of beliefs based on colour content, value content and so on. If error is constitutive for sets of attitudes or entire practices, this specification seems to demand, its constitutive role cannot be stated on the grounds of beliefs constituted by it. So if colour beliefs or value beliefs are constitutively false, they can only be accounted for with reference to what is known to be true. So subjects can have false beliefs about colour and value, but these are not sufficient to specify the content of such beliefs.
But then, the implausibly strong point -- that the contents of colour perceptions, evaluations or abstract judgements need to be accounted for against a background of facts -- is not Stroud’s but the naturalist’s. The deployment of error theory seems to reinforce this point.
I can think of two things straight away that speak against this interpretation, though. What speaks against it from a textual point of view is that Stroud does slide from belief to knowledge in a different context. The passage I’m referring to could just be another instance of that, as Joel suggests. What also speaks against it is that error theories can follow out the implications of constitutive error without showing much interest in what really exists in the word. I don’t know what use naturalism could make of those.
I'm not sure Stroud is making the systematic mistake Joel is suggesting he is (that of thinking that to specify belief contents we must suppose those contents to state truths).
The point about the formation of colour beliefs seems to turn on a specific difficulty dispositionalist theories have in correlating belief contents to the objective dispositions to cause them in nature. Stoud doesn't go into much detail, but the problem seems to be that we can't specify the content of such beliefs in terms of objective dispositions, and that, in fact, we need to reintroduce colours (folk psychologically construed).
I don't know about this argument given the paucity of detail, but it doesn't seem to reflect an implicit premise that Stroud holds to throughout the paper to the tune that we can't understand belief contents without supposing them to be true. It seems to be a specific feature of the colour dispositionalist theory that our relevant beliefs are true, but this is not why Stroud says the theory fails. It fails because objective dispostions to produce colours are apparently insufficient to fix belief contents.
So I think Stroud's crime here is rejecting a naturalistic theory of colour belief formation on too small a base of candidate theories, rather than supposing we can only fix belief contents if we take them to be true.
With the cases of maths and logic, I think Joel is right that Stroud thinks we can only fix beliefs about those domains if the belief contents are taken to be true. But in these domains that seems right to me, for a story about fixing the contents of those beliefs in terms of an error theory will not do justice to the specific nature of the contents in question (that when correctly formed they have true propositions as constituents!).
As for evaluation, the argument again turns on the failure of a dispositional account, so I don't think this reflects the systematic error suggested either, but is rather subject to the same criticisms outlined above vis a vis the formation of colour beliefs.
As I understand it, the dialectic of the section on colour is this:
(1) Naturalists (by which Stroud means physicalists) want to deny that there are colours.
(2) But they cannot deny that we have perceptions as of and beliefs about colours.
(3) The contents of those beliefs cannot be specified in terms of the facts they purport to state.
(4) A more sensible route is to reduce colours to dispositions to cause certain experiences.
(5) But there is no way, independent of the dispotision, to single out the experiences that they are dispositions to cause.
(6) So, whichever way they go naturalists cannot specify the content of colour experiences.
The point that I was making refers to the transition from (3) to (4) which appears to presuppose that there is no other way for the eliminativist about colour to account for the content of colour beliefs/perceptions. So, the point I was making is prior to the discussion of dispositionalism, which presupposes the hopelessness of eliminativism. [Of course, Stroud admits that 5 is mere assertion, but I wasn't challenging that]. I just don't see that he has provided any sort of argument at all. Here's the relevant passage:
"Since he holds that there is no such fact as an object's being coloured, he cannot specify the contents of those perceptions and beliefs in terms of any conditions that he believes actually hold in the world. If he could, that would amount to believing that there are coloured things in the world after all. Scientific naturalism denies that. But still, the beliefs and perceptions with those particular contents must be accounted for.
An easy way around this difficulty has suggested itself to many philosophers, at least in this case. They take the apparently more sensible scientific naturalist view that there really is no systematic error in our beliefs about the colours of things..." (29)
Now replace 'colour' with 'phologiston' and do some mild editing:
"Since he holds that there is no such thing as phlogiston, he cannot specify the contents of phlogiston beliefs in terms of any conditions that he believes actually hold in the world. If he could, that would amount to believing that there is phlogiston in the world after all. Scientific naturalism denies that. But still, the beliefs with those particular contents must be accounted for."
Now I'm not saying that coming up with a coherent account of empty names, natural kind concepts, etc. is as easy as falling off a log. My point is that Stroud hasn't pointed out anything that need specifically trouble a naturalist/physicalist. He has just pointed to a well discussed problem in the philosophy of language and thought, a problem that we all need an answer to.
I saw the dialectic slightly differently. I saw Stroud as arguing that the naturalist/physicalist is in the same boat as any eliminativist in that he/she has to account for the kind of content that is to be reduced only in terms of the facts that his/her reducing theory allows into its ontology.
Phologiston beliefs are easily dealt with because a whole class of belief contents is not being reduced, so a phologiston belief is just like any other empirical belief that results from employing a scientific theory, it's just false. Presumably we already have some way of characterising the way the contents of such beliefs are individuated that fits with the reductive ontology.
The situation is different with colour beliefs. If we say their contents are all just false because there are no facts to satisfy their truth conditions we still have to explain how in general these contents are individuated. And you're right, this is a perfectly general problem for any eliminativist theory. (But I'm not sure it's a problem that should be identified with problems in the philosophy of language and thought like that of empty names. The problem seems specific to reductivist theories.)
So I took Stroud to be saying that the naturalist/physicalist has this general problem over eliminativism. He then goes on to give different reasons why he/she can't solve it in various domains. Thus your (3) is really just admitting this general problem in the case of colour beliefs - if those beliefs are about 'colours', and there are none in the reductive ontology, then prima facie the 'reducers' have a problem. Not that it is impossible for them to give an error theory, but precisely that some such theory is now required.
My problem then was that we'd need an exhaustive account for each domain of why such theories can't be given, and this was missing from the article. Although to be fair, Stroud is (I think) only trying to show up a tension for naturalists rather than trying to argue the tension is beyond dissolution. And he rightly says that getting out of the tension by being open-minded about one's ontology is to get out of naturalism as a distinctive doctrine altogether.
Just stumbled upon you all (which is sad, since our own Robert Pippin is apparently on your steering committee), and I think the blog, its content, its associated project, and the readings you are taking on are all great. So, I'm quite sorry to see that you've been harassed by someone whose no doubt deeply-held views about how philosophical naturalism must be explored, if it is to be legitimately explored at all, tend towards the rabid. I thought you handled it well, though.
That aside, I hoped I might be able, somewhat belatedly, to join in your conversation about some of the readings in Naturalism in Question, beginning with Barry Stroud's 'Charm of Naturalism' piece. And I'll apologize in advance for the length of this post, but maybe there's something in it for everyone ;-).
First, I largely agree with what I take to be Matt's way of understanding Stroud's view of the 'general problem of restrictive naturalism'. As I would put it, Stroud's suggestion is that a variety of ontologically restrictive naturalism (ORN) which: (1) sensibly acknowledges what a more 'extreme' and ultimately 'embarrassing[ly] absurd[]' variety of ORN will not, namely, that we have perceptions at least as of colored things such as red apples; but (2) denies all the same that there is any such thing as color; thereby (3) denies itself the conceptual (or ontological, if you prefer) resources it requires to so much as have perceptions as of color in view qua explananda, which it could then undertake to explain or account for.
For to even have perceptions as of color in view qua explananda, we have to be able to identify those perceptions as the perceptions they are, viz., as of the *color* of a thing and not, e.g., (as) of its *shape*. One possible way of identifying the relevant perceptions--and the way that, according to Stroud, 'we do it in real life'--is 'by means of the colors of the objects they are typically perceptions of'. What is the content of a perception as of, say, red? What is a perception as of red a perception as of? In real life, Stroud says, it is a perception as of the color of, say, a ripe tomato.
But, of course, such a means of identifying the relevant explananda, i.e., in terms of what it is in the world that the relevant perceptions are perceptions (as) of, is not available to an eliminativist ORN (EORN): EORN denies that there is any such thing in the world as color, in contrast to what Stroud calls an 'apparently more sensible' reductivist ORN (RORN), which proposes that 'color' is indeed the name of something there is in its restricted conception of the world, viz., a disposition of 'colored' objects to produce certain perceptions in certain perceivers in certain circumstances. According to EORN, by contrast, there just is nothing for perceptions as of color to be perceptions as of, which appears to leave EORN with no grip at all on the psychological phenomena it acknowledges as part of the world, and which it would take up as an explananda, viz., perceptions as of colored objects.
But before moving on to Stroud's doubts about RORN's own possible success at identifying the relevant explananda, I wanted to say something admittedly inconclusive about the worry which arises for Joel (and perhaps Christian) at this point in Stroud's dialectic, which worry I would reformulate in my terms (and so, perhaps, in a way that Joel and/or Christian would reject) as follows: if Stroud is right about the incapacity of eliminativists about color to even so much as identify the perceptions as of color that they would take up as explananda, it would appear to follow, by parity of reasoning, that we cannot be eliminativists about anything we might have perceptions as of or false beliefs about, and which perceptions and/or beliefs we might wish to account for. But surely the implication is false, and so Stroud is wrong about the self-undermining character of EORN with regard to color: we needn't accept, e.g., phlogiston into our ontology just because we acknowledge that some people have (incorrectly) believed it to exist.
Now, I think the right thing to say here is involved and tricky, and certainly worth further discussion, but I take it that Matt's response is on the right general track: being an eliminativist about phlogiston is not relevantly like being an eliminativist about color, where this has to do with something like the categorial status and (at least prima facie) sui generis character of what is being denied a place the world, such that the case of phlogiston cannot ground the above parity-of-reasoning considerations.
For example, with regards to categorial status, what is being denied in the case of phlogiston is a specific kind of alleged substance, whereas, in the case of color, what is being denied is an entire class of determinable, not just one or another of its determinates, e.g., red. And this matters because we can appeal, inter alia, to the content of our other beliefs about other substances like oxygen, which are independently part of our ontology, so as to fix the content of the false belief that there is phlogiston. While in the case of color eliminativism, this means of fixing the content of the relevant false beliefs and perceptions is unavailable in the same way--at least so far as the categorial status of what is being denied is concerned--that it would be unavailable if we were to deny that, while we have beliefs purportedly about and perceptions as of substances like oxygen and phlogiston, there are no substances whatsoever in the world.
Moreover, and this speaks to the prima facie sui generis character of what is being denied in color eliminativism, it not at all clear which contents of which beliefs about (and perceptions of) things *other* than color we could use to identify the relevant perceptions as of color as the perceptions they are.
Which gets us back to Stroud's doubts about the prospects for RORN's attempt to avoid EORN's difficulty by allowing that there is something in the world which perceptions of the color of an object are perceptions of, viz., a certain disposition of that object, which can then be used to identify perceptions of color as the perceptions they are, but while retaining ORN's restricted ontology. But as Stroud points out, this strategy is in danger of vicious circularity: if you pick out the relevant dispositions in terms of the perceptions they are dispositions to produce, you can't then pick out the relevant perceptions solely in terms, again, of the dispositions to produce those perceptions: 'The question is: which perceptions? There must be some way of identifying the perceptions independently of the object's disposition to produce them', or else we haven't yet picked out anything determinate which we could then undertake to explain or account for.
So, the next move here is typically to appeal to some so-called “intrinsic” quality of perceptions of color, and 'not a quality that the perception is a perception *of*, but simply a quality of the perception itself’. And Stroud 'doubt[s] that we can make the right kind of sense of perceptions of color in this way'.
Of course, Stroud admits that 'none of this is something that I can hope to establish here', so the case in 'Charm' is incomplete, though I take it that his (2000) _The Quest For Reality: Subjectivity and the Metaphysics of Color_ is his more complete case for the suggested conclusion, at least in the case of color. And here I agree again with Matt that, for all their possible similarities, there is good reason to take up and examine separately each case of apparent denizens of the natural world which are excluded by an ontologically restrictive naturalism (and though I haven't read it since it came out, I seem to remember that this is precisely what Stroud recommends in _Quest_). The devil in the details, and all that.
Finally, then, some niggling:
(I) Joel writes that Stroud's 'point seems to be that a "restrictive naturalist" cannot account for the contents of our beliefs about those things that such a form of naturalism seeks to exclude from the world (e.g. colours).' But if I am right, Stroud's point is not so much that ORN cannot account for something that it is nevertheless capable, consistent with its ontological scruples, of getting into view as such, but rather the antecedent worry that ORN apparently cannot self-consistently get the relevant beliefs and perceptions so much as into view, so as even to have something to account for or not. So, as I read Stroud, ORN's difficulties come in earlier than an inability to account for our having beliefs which purport to be about the colors of things and perceptions as of colored objects (though, no doubt, there is a way of hearing this which implies, a fortiori, just such an inability).
(II) Joel also writes: 'If colours are allowed to be in the natural world, then we no longer have a "restrictive naturalism" but an "open-minded naturalism". And that, he thinks, wouldn't be a substantive version of naturalism at all. Every body would count as a naturalist if that was what naturalism was.' But I don't think it is right to say that, as Stroud sees things, open-minded naturalism is not 'a substantive version of naturalism at all'. Stroud is explicit that anti-supernaturalism is a substantive position, that open-minded naturalism is anti-supernaturalist, and that many philosophical positions have been and are supernaturalist. So, it is not true that 'everybody would count as a naturalist if [open-minded naturalism] was what naturalism was'. Nevertheless, I think it is right to say that Stroud doesn't take anti-supernaturalism to be a deep philosophical achievement, but rather a piece of (scientifically) educated commonsense and, indeed, the only variety of 'naturalism' (if one insists on talking that way, perhaps in order to keep the rejection of supernaturalism clearly in view) that is not deeply problematic.
Thanks for the nice comments. I still disagree about the philosophy though!
I, like both Stroud and yourself, think that there is a case for dispositionalists about colour to answer here. It was never my intention to suggest otherwise. My main point was restricted to the issue over eliminativism.
The reason, you suggest, that phlogiston and colour require different treatments is that colour, unlike phlogiston, purportedly sui generis. Indeed, there are law-like relations between the colours such that they make up a property-space. Fine. I just don't see why that makes a relevant difference. Here's what you say:
"we can appeal, inter alia, to the content of our other beliefs about other substances like oxygen, which are independently part of our ontology, so as to fix the content of the false belief that there is phlogiston. While in the case of color eliminativism, this means of fixing the content of the relevant false beliefs and perceptions is unavailable in the same way...that it would be unavailable if we were to deny that, while we have beliefs purportedly about and perceptions as of substances like oxygen and phlogiston, there are no substances whatsoever in the world.
Moreover...it not at all clear which contents of which beliefs about (and perceptions of) things *other* than color we could use to identify the relevant perceptions as of color as the perceptions they are."
First a small point, phlogiston isn't a non-existent substance but a non-existent kind. And the analogy is not 'denying that there are substances' but, perhaps, 'denying that there are elements'. The eliminativist is denying that there are colours, not that there are properties (so, I disagree that 'colour' names a category).
But the main point, it seems to me, is that you are assuming that something in the real world is needed to 'fix the content' of the relevant beliefs/perceptions. That, however, is a substantive claim about content and can't be treated as an unproblematic starting point. Now, I'm not saying that this is false. I'm just saying that, as far as I can tell, neither Stroud, nor Matt, nor you have given me any reason to believe it.
(By the way, I'm not arguing for eliminativism here. I actually. tend toward naive realism about the colours. My point is that Stroud doesn't give us, in this paper, any reason to doubt eliminativism. And that weakens his conclusion.)
Thanks, Joel, for posting my comments and for your response to them.
In reply to your response:
(1) I'm not sure what, if anything, is supposed to turn on calling phlogiston a 'kind of element' (as I take it you prefer), as opposed to a 'kind of substance' (as I had it). However, I'm happy to concede that point since I was only using 'substance' loosely anyway.
The real point, as far as my discussion was concerned, was that there is a relevant difference in the level of generality of what is being denied in the cases of phlogiston and color: phlogiston is to element as red is to color, where we can use the known properties of other elements such as oxygen and magnesium, as well as facts about the interaction of and subsequent changes to those elements in the presence of heat, to fix what it is that we are denying in the case of phlogison. And if we were red eliminativists--though I can anticipate difficuties even here--we could perhaps fix what it is that we are denying by appealing to the known properties of other colors, as well as facts about their interaction, etc. However, it is not just red that is being denied, it is color tout court. And even if the right way to put the analogy is (as I take you to suggest) that phlogiston is to element as color is to property, I'm not sure what facts about other properties would allow us to make headway in fixing what it is that we are denying when we deny color a place in the world.
But perhaps this is just not a helpful way of putting things, in general, and in any case you appear unpersuaded.
(2) As to what you call 'the main point', I can't see where I or Stroud have imposed any philosophically contentious requirement to the effect that 'something in the real world is needed to "fix the content" of the relevant beliefs/perceptions.' To think so is, on my view, to have missed the structure of Stroud's dialectic. Because the naturalist eliminativism in question at the relevant point in the dialectic isn't what Stroud earlier criticized as the 'extreme' and 'embarrassing[ly] absurd[]' view that there are not even any perceptions as of color, because it denies that there are any psychological states at all.
Rather, the relevant variety of restrictive naturalism denies only that there are any colors outside our experience for us to have experience as of, while accepting that we have experience as of them. So, it may be true that the former, more extreme variety of naturalism has nothing to explain in the way of how it is that we come to have perceptions as of color (though there are other problems with this view, like whether an adherent of it can consistently say of herself that she believes it). However, the point is that, on the latter, less extreme variety of restrictive naturalism's own view, perceptions as of color are on the table as explananda, just like any other psychological state, about which it would then undertake to say how it is that we come to have them, while limiting its explanatory resources to its restrictive ontology.
And at this stage in the dialectic, Stroud's question is whether the less extreme variety of naturalism has left itself the resources to even say what perceptions it is that it would undertake to say how it is that we come to have them. One possible strategy, in general, is to say that we are undertaking to explain how it is that we come to have perceptions as of the color of ripe tomatoes. But such a strategy is obviously not available to such an eliminativist, and it is not clear how such an eliminativist is otherwise going to say what it is that it is attempting to explain how it is that we come to have, particularly when we distinguish (as Stroud does) even this variety of eliminativism from an 'apparently more sensible' reductivism which would allow that there is something that perceptions of color are perceptions of (where such perception is possibly factive now, in a way that eliminativism cannot allow).
So, it is not that an unargued requirement has been imposed from outside about how it is that eliminativism must go about picking out what it is that it would explain. Rather, as I see it, a possible way of eliminativism's doing that picking out has been considered and rejected, and it is not clear how else eliminativism could proceed, though of course the eliminativist can offer other possibilities. Stroud's case, as I quoted him to admit, is not complete, and from what I know of his work, I would be surprised if he ever thought that all possible ancillary maneuvers had been sealed off through philosophical reflection. To the best of my knowledge, the only case where Stroud thinks that is true is Wittgenstein's discussion of rule-following in PI.
Best,
Pete
Idon't really have the time to give a proper response. So here's a quicky. You say:
"One possible strategy, in general, is to say that we are undertaking to explain how it is that we come to have perceptions as of the color of ripe tomatoes. But such a strategy is obviously not available to such an eliminativist"
But why? Surely, only on the assumption that the content of the relevant experiences or beliefs must 'be fixed' by something that the eliminativist agrees exists in the actual world. If that assumption isn't made, then we can say that the content of the relevant experiences is that which a veridical experience of a red tomato would have in a coloured world. Our world is not coloured, so our experiences are non-veridical.
Unfortunately, Joel, my reply can't be similarly quick, but I think for good reason:
(1) The strategy in question is unavailable to the color eliminativist not (as you put it) 'on the assumption that the content of the relevant experiences or beliefs must "be fixed" by something that the eliminativist agrees exists in the actual world.' The strategy in question *just is* to specify the content of a perception as of red in terms of something there is in the world, namely, the color of ripe tomatoes. Since the color eliminativist denies that ripe tomatoes have any color, this strategy is unavailable to the color eliminativist. The assumption you mention would no doubt likewise render the strategy in question unavailable to the color eliminativist, since it makes a much stronger claim--viz., about general conditions that a specification of the content of an experience as of color must satisfy, to the effect that it must be in terms of 'something that the eliminativist agrees exists in the actual world'--but such an assumption is in no way required for the relevant strategy to be unavailable to the color eliminativist.
Indeed, I can't see that the color eliminativist would even accept that such a strategy *is* genuinely available, to her or to anyone, insofar as she is antecedently committed to the claim that, all appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, there are no color of things to specify perceptions as of them in terms of. However, since appearances are to the contrary, the burden of proof is on her to show that she can explain away the appearance of perceptions of color (which she will call, perforce, perceptions *as of* color) using only the terms of her restricted ontology. And here we have made full circle to the question of whether the color eliminativist can get the requisite explanandum into view in a way other than in the above way, which she herself would claim cannot be a genuine option, in light of the absence of color in the world. So, I think it can only reflect a misunderstanding of the dialectic between Stroud and the color eliminativist to think that there is a question here of whether the the color eliminativist can (or would attempt to) take up the above strategy for specifying the content of a perception as of, e.g., red.
(2) Nevertheless, you propose that, so long as it is not required that the color eliminativist specify the content of a perception as of color in terms of something there is in the actual world, she 'can say that the content of the relevant experiences is that which a veridical experience of a red tomato would have in a coloured world'. Moreover, you appear to understand this proposal to amount to the color eliminativist occupying the strategy discussed above, but I think we can leave this latter issue to one side. For the moment, the crucial question is whether it is true that your proposed means of specifying the content of a perception as of color succeeds at doing so.
And I think the answer here is, clearly: No. And the obstacles here are two-fold.
The first is mere emptiness. You propose that the color eliminativist say that the content of a perception as of red is 'that [content] which a veridical experience of a red tomato would have in a colored world.' But if I am asked to say what it is that I am talking about when I am talking about a perception as of property P, where I stipulate that nothing in the actual world has property P, if I respond that I am talking about a perception as of a tomato with property P in a possible world where things have property P, surely I have not yet said what it is I am talking about.
However, even if the specification weren't empty in this way, it still wouldn't be sufficient to specify the content of a perception as of color: the content of a perception as of color is different than the content of a perception as of shape or size or location, and so on, for an indefinite number of things which we may have perceptions as of. But 'that [content] which a veridical experience of a red tomato would have in a colored world' does not distinguish between these several different contents: such an experience would involve all these perceptual contents, and a great many more besides. So, the content of a perception as of color cannot be specified in that way. The initial strategy discussed above does not suffer from this lack of determinacy because it appeals to the *color* of a thing to identify the *type* of property a perception as of red is a perception as of, and to such color as a ripe tomato has to fix just what color a perception as of red is a perception as of.
In general, I'm not sure that a color eliminativist would even want to accept your invitation to specify the content of color experiences other than in terms of facts about 'something that the eliminativist agrees exists in the actual world'. For while I recognize that you likely meant thereby to release the eliminativist from any need to specify the content of experiences as of color in terms of something that exists in the world *apart from her experience*, your phrasing takes in quite a bit more than that. Perceptions as of color are themselves something the relevant eliminativists agree exists in the actual world, and presumably they might wish to attempt to specify what it is they are talking about when they are talking about perceptions as of color by appealing to something that Stroud mentions only in relation to the dispositionalist: namely, (at least on one established use of the term) color 'qualia' or, in Stroud's terms, the 'intrinsic' qualities of perceptions as of color themselves. Certainly this is a popular and well-debated strategy, about which Stroud only says in 'Charm'--if we make the appropriate adjustments in language to accommodate the fact that the target is the relevant sort of eliminativist, and not a reductivist--that he 'doubt[s] that we can make the right kind of sense of perceptions [as] of color in this way,' though I suggested that Stroud has presented a much fuller case to support his doubts in _Quest_.
Now, I happen to share Stroud's doubts about the reductivist's prospects for making sense of perceptions of color, where they appeal to color qualia to identify what it is that they are attempting to make sense of, and precisely because of that appeal. Moreover, I don't think eliminativism differs from reductivism in any way that would block the problem this appeal generates for reductivism. So, I think the eliminativist will have the same problem as the reductivist.
For your part, you indicated in an earlier post that you think that 'there is a case for dispositionalists about colour to answer' in 'Charm'. However, you didn't indicate what it is in Stroud's discussion that you feel generates a problem for the reductivist which she must answer. If it is something unconnected to her appeal to color qualia to fix what it is that she is attempting to make sense of, or if you think the problem lies only in such an appeal when it is combined with color reductivism, then perhaps you think there is no problem in the eliminativist's appeal to color qualia to fix what she is attempting to make sense of. In that case, barring a reading group on Stroud's longer case in _Quest_, and discussion of whether that case applies to the eliminativist as well as to the reductivist, I would simply cede the floor for other discussion, though I would be interested to hear (depending on what your view actually turns out to be): (1) what you think generates the problem for the reductivist that is unconnected to her appeal to color qualia; or (2) what you take the difference between color reductivism and color eliminativism to be, such that an appeal to color qualia generates a problem in the former case, but not the latter. On the other hand, if you think the problem Stroud identifies for the color reductivists *is* connected to her appeal to color qualia to say what it is that she is attempting to make sense of, and that, in the problem this generates, color reductivism and color eliminativism stand on all fours together, then perhaps you agree with me that a color eliminativist who makes such an appeal is in no better a position than the color reductivist who, as we already agree, has a problem.
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