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Perception and Animal Belief

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

L. S. Carrier
L. S. Carrier
Affiliation:
University of Miami
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Extract

My chief aim here is to achieve a clearer understanding of what it means to say that people perceive that something is the case. I shall assume that to gain such an understanding it will be sufficient to exhibit the logical form of such perception sentences in terms of predicates, quantifiers, and variables. I shall thus attempt to uncover the most important presuppositions housed in our saying that a person perceives that something is so, with a view to making these presuppositions explicit in the exhibition of logical form. To facilitate my discovery of these presuppositions I shall first try to clarify what it means to say that a non-human animal believes that something is so; for it will be my contention that sentences expressing animal belief share some of the main logical features of sentences expressing what one perceives to be the case.

Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 55 , Issue 212 , April 1980 , pp. 193 - 209
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1980

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References

1 Armstrong, D. M., Belief, Truth and Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), 25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Quine, W. V. O., ‘Reference and Modality’, in From a Logical Point of View (New York: Harper, 1961).Google Scholar

3 Armstrong, , op. cit., 26Google Scholar. Wilson, J. R. S.seems to agree with Armstrong in Emotion and Object (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), 172CrossRefGoogle Scholar, when he says: ‘If one approaches belief from the point of view of the classifications an animal can make, it is natural to understand belief statements extensionally. In the pre-linguistic situation, what is at issue is a creature's behavioural response to a thing or situation. Any statement reporting that the creature responds to a thing or situation, and any statement which is to be spelt out in terms of such behavioural responses, will be true whatever description is chosen. Substitutivity should therefore hold.’ What makes it unclear whether Wilson really would support Armstrong's view is the former's reference to statements ‘to be spelt out in terms of such behavioural responses’. If he means here that we must, in interpreting an animal's belief, make explicit reference to the different ways in which an animal classifies things, then his view will agree with the one that I shall presently defend.

4 Armstrong, , op. cit., 27.Google Scholar

5 Hinton, J. M. argues against the claim that one's perceiving that p entails one's believing that p in section 13 of Experiences (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973), 101–112Google Scholar. He does so on the strength of ordinary-language considerations which make it perfectly in order to say, for example, ‘Either I perceived that p, or else I am having that illusion; I don't know which’. In section II, I shall attempt to provide a further basis for the propriety of saying such things.

6 The predicates mentioned in (1a) and (2a), respectively, are just shorthand expressions for ‘is believed by Tabby by means of perceptible features F to be edible’ and ‘is not believed by Tabby by means of perceptible features G to be edible’.

7 Hintikka, Jaakko has (pace Quine) formalized the requirements for quantification into opaque contexts in Knowledge and Belief (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1962), Chapter SixGoogle Scholar. Though I agree with both the motivation and the first-order predicate formalism that Hintikka provides, I withhold any enthusiasm for the semantic underpinnings of that formalism, given by Hintikka in terms of the cross-identification of individuals in possible worlds. I think it unnecessary to have recourse to possible-world semantics in explaining how belief-holders can be said to identify (or mis-identify) the actual individuals that their beliefs concern.

8 I have myself elaborated on the requirements for quantifying into opaque belief constructions in my ‘Belief About Objects’, Critica VI, Nos. 16–17 (01-05 1972), 99–117Google Scholar. Though my approach there owes much to Hintikka, it still remains neutral with regard to accepting the possible-world semantics in which Hintikka's explanations are couched.

9 Hamlyn, D. W., The Psychology of Perception (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1961), 56.Google Scholar

10 Hinton, , op. cit., 32.Google Scholar

11 Ibid., 104–106.

12 Hintikka, Jaakko, ‘On the Logic of Perception’, in Perception and Personal Identity, Care, N. S. and Grimm, R. H. (eds) (Cleveland: Case Western Reserve University Press, 1969), 140–173.Google Scholar

13 For an account of ‘success grammar’ see Ryle, Gilbert's The Concept of Mind (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1962), 222Google Scholar. For causal requirements see Grice, H. P.'s ‘The Causal Theory of Perception’, reprinted in Perceiving, Sensing, and Knowing, Swartz, R. J. (ed.), (Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, 1965), 438–472.Google Scholar

14 Dretske, Fred, Seeing and Knowing (New York: Humanities Press, 1969).Google Scholar

15 I should like to deny, in other words, that one can take an automatic step from experiencing to the entertaining of sense-data, as John Pennycuick (among others) does in his In Contact with the Physical World (London: Allen & Unwin, 1971), 43–49.Google Scholar