Philosophia

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-018-9969-6

Epistemological Disjunctivism
and Introspective Indiscriminability

Chris Ranalli 1

Received: 31 October 2017 / Revised: 14 March 2018 / Accepted: 29 March 2018

# The Author(s) 2018

Abstract According to Duncan Pritchard’s Philosophical Issues, 21(1), 434–455, (2011,

2012, 2015)version of epistemological disjunctivism, in paradigm cases of perceptual
knowledge, one’s knowledge that p is grounded in one’s seeing that p, and one can, by
reflection alone, come to know that they see that p. In this paper, I argue that the epistemic
conception of introspective indiscriminability is incompatible with epistemological
disjunctivism, so understood. This has the consequence that theories of the nature of sensory
experience which accept the epistemic conception of introspective indiscriminability—such
as phenomenal character disjunctivism and certain forms of naïve realism—are inconsistent
with epistemological disjunctivism, so understood. I then argue that proponents of episte-
mological disjunctivism face a formidable challenge explaining in what sense, if any, one
can have purely reflective knowledge of their factive rational support.

Keywords Epistemological disjunctivism . Metaphysical disjunctivism . Introspective

indiscriminability . Reflective knowledge . Naive realism

1 Introduction

Epistemological disjunctivism is the thesis that the nature of your rational support for your
external world belief that p in the good case is different from the nature of your rational
support, if any, for your belief that p in the bad case.1 In his recent work, Duncan Pritchard

1
For this characterization of epistemological disjunctivism, see Pritchard (2015). See also French (2016). Alternative
characterizations of the view are possible as well. For example, one can express epistemological disjunctivism as the
thesis that there is a difference in the strength of one’s epistemic support for their target belief that p in the good case
and bad case. If this is sufficient for being a version of epistemological disjunctivism, then every theory inconsistent
with the New Evil Demon thesis constitutes as form of epistemological disjunctivism, which might be too liberal.
Rather, it needs to be restricted not to one’s total epistemic support at a time t for one’s belief that p, but crucially only
those epistemic properties which supervene on one’s mental properties.

* Chris Ranalli
[email protected]

1
Department of Philosophy, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, De Boelelaan 1105,
1081 HVAmsterdam, The Netherlands
 Philosophia

has defended a form of epistemological disjunctivism (henceforth ED) which characterizes

the nature of the rational support for your belief that p in the good case as follows: your
rational support is factive (because it consists in seeing that p, and seeing that p entails p) and
accessible through introspective reflection alone (because you can come to know, by
reflection alone, that you see that p, and that this is your reason for believing that p).
Why believe ED? The main reasons are that ED promises to bring together core
elements of epistemic internalism and epistemic externalism,2 that it resolves the problem
of radical skepticism in a satisfying way,3 and because it gives a satisfactory theory of
perceptual knowledge which captures elements of our ordinary epistemic practices.4
Naturally enough, it faces a number of challenges.5 This paper presents a challenge which
is different from the others so far presented against ED, which have targeted the
specifically epistemological commitments of the view. In particular, this problem high-
lights a tension between ED and certain theses about the metaphysics of mind. The main
challenge is that it cannot be consistently combined with the epistemic conception of
introspective indiscriminability—a modest and intuitively plausible conception of such
indiscriminability (see Martin 2004, 2006). The major import of this consequence, as we
will see, is that ED is in tension with naïve realism about perceptual experience, since such
a conception of indiscriminability is plausibly thought to be necessary for defending naïve
realism from the objection that, during cases of perfect hallucination, your mental state
can have the same phenomenal character as it does during veridical perception (see Martin
2002, 2004, 2006, 2007; more on this in §6). Since naïve realism is one of the primary
reasons for supporting metaphysical disjunctivism, it turns out that there is an inconsis-
tency between epistemological disjunctivism and certain varieties of metaphysical
disjunctivism as well, contrary to what many epistemologists may have initially thought
(Pritchard 2012, Byrne and Logue 2008; more on this in §6). Finally, the total package of
ED and metaphysical disjunctivism displays a certain kind of theoretical unity: both our
perceptual reasons and our perceptual experiences can include ordinary external things as
constituents.6 Intuitively, it would be a disappointing result to find out that no such unified
metaphysical and epistemological theory is forthcoming.7

2
See Pritchard (2012), pp. 1–4.
3
ibid., pp. 125–150.
4
ibid., pp. 17–18.
5
In his (2012), Pritchard tried to show that the main challenges facing epistemological disjunctivism can be
overcome. The subsequent literature has tended to focus on these problems: the basis problem, the distin-
guishability problem, and the access problem. For critical responses to Pritchard’s (2011, 2012) response to the
basis problem, see French 2016, 2012), Ghijsen (2015), and Ranalli (2014). For a critical response to the
distinguishability problem, see Boult (2017). For critical responses to the access problem, see Kraft (2015).
For whether Pritchard’s form of ED can satisfactorily handle Cartesian skepticism, see Goldberg (2016)
and Zalabardo (2015). For whether ED can satisfactorily handle the new evil demon problem, see Madison
(2014). For a more holistic critique of Pritchard’s (2012) epistemological disjunctivist project, see Littlejohn
(2016).
6
By ‘constituent’, I just mean partial constitution. So, the thought is that ED implies that your perceptual
reasons in paradigmatic cases of perceptual knowledge can be states of mind like seeing that you have hands. I
take it that a constituent part of your perceptual reason here is your hands. Naïve realism about perceptual
experience implies that in paradigmatic cases of veridical perceptual experience, such as when you see your
hands in broad daylight, your hands is a constituent part of your visual experience at that time.
7
Importantly, if the main argument I propose is sound, it would show that a certain form of metaphysical
disjunctivism and ED, so understood, are inconsistent. This is the naïve realist or relationalist form of
metaphysical disjunctivism. Another form of metaphysical disjunctivism, what I call Brepresentational
metaphysical disjunctivism^ in §4, would still be, prima facie at least, consistently combinable with ED.
Philosophia

My main argument can be summarized as follows. First, ED is inconsistent with the

epistemic conception of introspective indiscriminability. Roughly, this is the thesis that
introspective indiscriminability is the impossibility of knowing, by reflection alone, any
non-trivial differences between mental states. This is interesting in its own right, but
what makes it especially interesting for proponents of ED is that certain theories of the
nature of perceptual experience, such as phenomenal character disjunctivism, take the
epistemic conception of introspective indiscriminability as a commitment of the view
(see Fish 2010; cf. Martin 2004, 2006). So, prima facie at least, the result is that ED and
phenomenal character disjunctivism are inconsistent. Secondly, however, if proponents
of ED opt for the phenomenal conception of introspective indiscriminability instead,
this too makes their view inconsistent with phenomenal character disjunctivism.
Thirdly, proponents of ED might need to revise their conception of introspective
indiscriminability in response to this argument, or else accept that their view is
inconsistent with phenomenal character disjunctivism. Both options are of course
available to the proponent of ED. However, I’ll argue that the first option puts
considerable pressure on them to revise their views about reflective self-knowledge,
and the second option makes ED less metaphysically neutral than it was otherwise
advertised as being (see Pritchard 2012; Byrne and Logue 2008).
Here’s the structure of the paper. In section 2, I explain what epistemological
disjunctivism is, and, in particular, Pritchard’s (2012, 2015) version of epistemo-
logical disjunctivism (ED). In section 3, I explain why the epistemic conception of
introspective indiscriminability and ED are inconsistent. The next two sections seek
to defend the premises of that argument. So, in section 4, I argue that proponents of
ED should maintain that propositional perceptual states, such as seeing that p, are
mental states. In section 5, I defend the premise that reflective knowledge of your
current mental state requires reflective knowledge that they are not merely perfect
‘ringers’ or ‘copies’ for what you take them to be. In section 6, I consider the
phenomenal conception of introspective indiscriminability, and I argue that this
view is inconsistent with phenomenal character disjunctivism. The upshot is that, if
the proponent of ED accepts the phenomenal conception of introspectively
indiscriminability instead of the epistemic conception, then they should deny
phenomenal character disjunctivism. Section 7 considers a detailed reply from
proponents of the distinction between favoring and discriminating epistemic sup-
port as a way of avoiding the tension between the epistemic conception of intro-
spective indiscriminability and ED. I argue that the application of that distinction to
purely reflective knowledge of your mental states cannot be plausibly sustained.

2 Epistemological Disjunctivism

Epistemological Disjunctivism can be expressed as a thesis about the nature, or the

strength, of one’s rational support in a pair of cases.8 The first case is one in which the
8
Two notes: first, I’m following Pritchard in his use of ‘rational support’, which I take to mean epistemically
rational support, that is, it supports taking a doxastic attitude toward the truth-value of a proposition, such as
belief. Secondly, in his earlier work on epistemological disjunctivism, Pritchard tended to formulate ED in
terms of the strength of one’s rational support. Since his (2012), however, he has characterized ED in terms of
the kind of rational support that it is. See Pritchard (2015, 2016).
 Philosophia

agent counts as having a veridical perception, and, on this basis, comes to know that p.
This is the good case. In the second case, the agent has an introspectively
indiscriminable hallucination, and, on this basis, comes to believe that p but fails to
know that p because p is false. According to the epistemological disjunctivist about the
nature of one’s rational support in these cases:

Different Nature: the nature of one’s rational support for p in the good case is
different from the nature of one’s rational support for p in the bad case.

In particular, the proponent of epistemological disjunctivism who frames their

negative thesis in terms of a difference in the nature of the rational support in
the good case and the bad case thinks that the rational support one has in the
good case picks out a kind or species of rational support which is never
available in the bad case. On the other hand, an epistemological disjunctivist
might instead frame their negative claim in terms of the strength of one’s
rational support in these cases:

Different Strength: the strength of one’s rational support for p in the good case is
different from the strength of one’s rational support for p in the bad case (namely,
one’s rational support in the good case for p is better than one’s rational support in
the bad case for p).

Now, you should ask why one would think that the rational support for your external
world belief in the good case is better than your rational support for the same belief in
the bad case. One reason that might be offered is that your external world belief enjoys
no rational support in the bad case, and thus your rational support in the good case is
trivially better than your rational support in the bad case.
Another reason why the epistemological disjunctivist might hold that your rational
support for p in the good case differs in strength from your rational support for p in the
bad case is that, in the good case, your rational support is factive (it entails that p) and
you are in a position to know, by reflection alone, that you have such a rational support
for p. So, this strategy compares the epistemic properties of the two cases, consistently
with the idea that there are epistemic properties relevant to your external world belief
that p in the bad case, and says that the epistemic properties of the good case are better
than the bad case. In effect, the proponent of this way of thinking about your rational
support in the good case says that, everything else being equal, factive epistemic
reasons are better than non-factive epistemic reasons.9

9
Note that this view, that ceteris paribus factive epistemic reasons are better than non-factive epistemic
reasons, looks intuitively plausible but a story will need to be given for why it’s true. One story that could be
given is that the reason why we want our beliefs to be based on good reasons is that good reasons are
indicators that our beliefs are likely to be true, and truth is the cognitive goal of belief (cf. Bonjour 1985). So,
the thought is that factive reasons serve this cognitive goal par excellence, and are thereby better than reasons
which fall short of serving the goal perfectly. However, you might also think that factive reasons aren’t
necessarily better than non-factive reasons if you are comparing reasons one-to-many and not only one-to-one.
For example, it might be that a set of non-factive reasons for believing p is overall better reason to believe that
p than a single factive reason is to believe that p, although the latter serves the cognitive goal of belief better
than the former.
Philosophia

Finally, the epistemological disjunctivist underwrites their negative thesis with a

positive thesis:

[...] in paradigm cases of perceptual knowledge the knowledge in question enjoys

a rational support that is both factive and reflectively accessible. In particular, it is
the view that when one has perceptual knowledge in such cases, the reflectively
accessible rational support one has for one’s knowledge that p is that one sees that
p (Pritchard 2015: 124).

The thought is that the positive thesis can explain why one’s rational support in
the good case and the bad case are not just two distinct instances of the same kind
of rational support, but rather instances of two distinct kinds of rational support.
After all, one might think that the properties <being a factive rational support >
and < being a non-factive rational support > is a difference which carves rational
support kinds at the joints.

3 Epistemological Disjunctivism and the Epistemic Conception

of Introspective Indiscriminability

What is it for two mental states or events to be introspectively indiscriminable for a

subject? Proponents of the epistemic conception of introspective indiscriminability
accept the following equivalence thesis:

Epistemic Conception of Introspective Indiscriminability: For all S, and any

occurrent mental states m, a mental state m1 is introspectively indiscriminable
from m2 if and only if S is not in a position to know, by reflection alone at that
time, that m1 is not m2 and vice-versa.10

Why accept the epistemic conception of introspective indiscriminability? One

of the main reasons is that it seems to avoid controversial ontological commitment
in cases of hallucination. On the epistemic conception of introspective
indiscriminability, it’s not the case that there has to be a difference in the non-
epistemic properties of m 1 and m2 in order for them to be introspectively
indiscriminable for you. So, the theory doesn’t presuppose that, say, during a
bad case in which you are suffering a perfect hallucination which is introspec-
tively indiscriminable from a veridical perception, there is some commonality in
the sense-data that you are sensorily aware of, such as being sensorily aware of the
same sense-data, or that there is some commonality in the representational content
of your experiences, such as being the same representational content. It’s entirely
neutral on those ontological questions. Intuitively, this is a virtue of the view.

10
Cf. Siegel’s (2008) definition: BX is indiscriminable from Y by a subject S at time t iff S cannot know at
time t by introspection alone that X is not Y^ (Siegel 2008: 209). For criticisms of this theory in connection
with naïve realism and disjunctivism, see Siegel (2008, 2010). See also Byrne and Logue (2008: 58) for this
definition.
 Philosophia

Moreover, some philosophers of perception think that the epistemic conception of

introspective indiscriminability is necessary in order to make sense of certain
disjunctivist views about the metaphysics of experience (see Martin 2004, 2007; see
Fish 2010 for an overview. More on this in §6). On Martin’s view, for example, the
epistemic conception of introspective indiscriminability is necessary for naive realism
about sensory experience (see Martin 2004: 82). Finally, some philosophers have
appealed to the epistemic conception of introspective indiscriminability in order to
motivate certain forms of epistemic externalism, and certain theses about vagueness
(see Williamson 2000, 2013).
I won’t be assessing whether the epistemic conception of introspective
indiscriminability is plausible. In this section, I’ll argue only that the epistemic con-
ception of introspective indiscriminability and ED are prima facie inconsistent.
Here, then, is the argument:

(P1) A mental state m1 is introspectively indiscriminable from m2 for S at t if and

only if S is not in a position to know at t, by reflection alone, that m1 is not m2.

(P2) The mental state you have in the good case, m1, whereby you know that
p on the basis of seeing that p, is introspectively indiscriminable from your
mental state in the bad case, m2, where you merely seem to see that p but fail
to know that p.

From (P1) and (P2):

(C1) You are not in a position to know, by reflection alone, in the good case, that
m1 is not m2.

Now we add the following three premises:

(P3) If ED is true, then you can know, by reflection alone, in the good case, that
you see that p.

(P4) The seeing that p-state is your mental state in the good case and the mere
seeming to see that p-state is your mental state in the bad case.

(P5) If you are not in a position to know, by reflection alone, in the good case,
that your seeing that p-state is not merely a seeming to see that p-state, then you
cannot know, by reflection alone, in the good case, that you see that p.

From (C1) and (P4), it follows that:

(C2) You are not in a position to know, by reflection alone, in the good case, that
your seeing that p-state is not a mere seeming to see that p-state.

From modus ponens on (P5) and (C2), it follows that:

(C3) You cannot know, by reflection alone, in the good case, that you see that p.
Philosophia

From modus tollens on (C3) and (P3), it follows that:

(C) ED is false.

The argument is valid. So, the main question is whether the premises are adequately
supported. Premise (P2) expresses a relatively uncontroversial thesis about one’s
mental states in the good and bad cases. Premise (P3) expresses a core commitment
of ED.11 So, those premises will be left unexamined.
The main premises we will need to examine, then, are the first premise (P1), which
expresses the epistemic conception of introspective indiscriminability; premise (P4),
which expresses the view that seeing that p-states are mental states, and finally premise
(P5), which links the inability to reflectively know that your mental state is not a mere
‘ringer’ for it—e.g., that it’s not merely a seeming state—with the inability to reflec-
tively know that you are in the mental state you believe yourself to be in (e.g., a seeing
that p-state). So, the proponent of ED will need to either deny the epistemic conception
of introspective indiscriminability, deny the thesis that seeing that p-states are mental
states, or else deny that there is such a link between reflective knowledge of one’s
mental states with reflective knowledge that they aren’t merely ringers for such mental
states. As we’ll see, I’ll argue that every option comes with a heavy price for
proponents of ED to pay.

4 Are Propositional Perceptual States Mental States?

According to (P4), your mental state in the good case is your seeing that p-state whereas it’s
a ringer for that kind of state in the bad case—that is, it’s a mere seeming of being in such a
state (e.g., seeming to see that p; cf. McDowell 1995). In this section, I want to defend (P4).
First, some stage setting. Notice that ordinary perception-reports suggest that we can
distinguish between objectual perceptual states and propositional perceptual states
(see Dretske 1969; Cassam 2007a, b; French 2012; Stroud 2011). For example,
consider the following visual perception-ascriptions: ‘you saw an open bank’, and
‘you saw that the bank is open’. Taking the verb-phrases to denote visual states of
mind, the latter, but not the former, looks like it denotes a factive propositional attitude.
That is, that you merely see an open bank doesn’t entail that you take any propositional
attitude with respect to the bank which is open, whereas seeing that the bank is open
intuitively seems to entail not only that there is a bank which is open, but that you take
some kind of propositional attitude towards it. Of course, both states have existential
commitment: you cannot see an open bank unless there exists an open bank that you
see, just as you cannot see that the bank is open unless there is a bank which is open.
Intuitively, propositional perceptual states at least seem to have epistemological
properties that objectual perceptual states lack. In particular, seeing that the bank is
open seems to entail not only that the bank is open, but that you know that it’s open.12

11
See Pritchard (2012).
12
However, see the arguments from Pritchard (2011); McDowell (2002); Turri (2010) against this view. For
responses, see Ranalli (2014) and French (2012). For advocates of such an entailment thesis, see Williamson
(2000); Stroud, (2011); Dretske (1969); Cassam (2007a, b).
 Philosophia

But it doesn’t seem this way if you simply see an open bank. Simply seeing something
doesn’t even seem to entail that you know anything about it. For you might see an open
bank and yet fail to have the concept of a bank, or the predicational concept of being
open. Still, intuitively you can see an open bank even if you lack the concept of a bank.
It’s at least less obvious that this could be true of seeing that the bank is open. After all,
it strikes us as odd—if not inconsistent—to maintain that one sees that the bank is open
but doesn’t know what a bank is; or that one sees that it’s open but fails to even believe
it. At a minimum, seeing that the bank is open involves representing that the bank is
open, whereas this is less clear for merely seeing an open bank. This is all part of what
we might call the Bphenomenology^ of propositional perceptual states (e.g., seeing that
x is F) and the Bphenomenology^ of objectual perceptual states (e.g., seeing an x which
is F): they inform our initial theorizing about these states, even if, in the end, they need
to be revised.
Now one might wonder whether propositional perceptual states, such as seeing that
p-states, are mental states (see Williamson 2000 for the view that they are). According
to views like naive realism, objectual perceptual states at least are mental states. Seeing
an open bank is a mental state on this view because seeing itself is a conscious
awareness relation to external physical things (cf. Martin 2004, 2007. See also
Campbell 2002; Fish 2009). And consciousness (or conscious awareness of…) is a
paradigmatic mental state. When you see an open bank, on this view, you enter into a
relation of conscious awareness with the open bank, such that the open bank becomes a
constituent of your visually conscious state of mind at that time. Ordinary seeing, for
the naive realist, is what we might call a fundamentally visually conscious Brelational^
mental state. But, for all that, it’s still a mental state.
Yet most philosophers of perception are not naive realists. Most philosophers of
perception maintain that objectual perceptual states are compositional states: part
mental, part non-mental. The mental part is the conscious sensory experience
(whether one thinks of this as a representational state, or a conscious state with
adverbial modification, or a relational state to sense-data; or some combination of
these), whereas the non-mental part is the object that one sees and various bodily
causal intermediaries. So, for most philosophers of perception anyway, objectual
perceptual states are not mental states.13
What about propositional perceptual states? This is a more delicate question. First,
we need to distinguish between different kinds of propositional perceptual state reports.
Some ascriptions of ‘S sees that p’ are devices for marking that S knows that p, such as
when you see that things are getting worse, not better. In such cases, you might be
blindfolded, but the ascription ‘you see that p’ (for certain propositions p, like that
things are getting worse), could still be true of you at that time. Seeing, conceived as a
fundamentally visual state of mind, isn’t necessary for it to be true that you see that p,
in this sense. Seeing that p, in this sense at least, is a mental state only if knowing that p
is a mental state. This is the Bpure epistemic^-use of ‘S sees that p’-ascriptions (see
Gisborne 2010; cf. French 2012, 2013).
Another, related use of ‘S sees that p’ is to mark that S knows that p on the basis of
vision (or visual experience; see French 2013). This takes us closer to the view that
such ascriptions are ascriptions of mental states. But, still, it turns on whether one wants

13
See Williamson (2000) for the view that arguments, like the one sketched above, are fallacious.
Philosophia

to count seeing that p-states as being mental states because visual experiences are
mental states or not. One might hold that seeing that p, although it is in part a visual
mental state, is nevertheless composed of non-mental parts as well, and that this is
sufficient for making it not a mental state.
What these suggestions motivate is the idea that moving from premises about ‘S sees
that p’-ascriptions and premises about the ontology of seeing that p-states, to the thesis
that seeing that p-states are mental states, will be controversial. So, we shouldn’t expect
to find uncontroversial arguments or evidence for the thesis that seeing that p-states are
mental states from the ontology of mind or the theory of perception-reports.
Perhaps a better place to focus is on the proponent of ED’s commitment to
reflective access, and specifically reflective propositional knowledge of one’s
seeing that p-states. That is, rather than focusing on whether or not there’s a
general argument from premises about the ontology of mind or the theory of
perception reports for the thesis that seeing that p-states are mental states, we
should focus only on whether proponents of ED specifically are committed to the
thesis that seeing that p-states are mental states. So, let’s raise that question: are
proponents of ED committed to this thesis? I think it’s very difficult for them to
avoid this commitment.14 After all, it’s hard to see how one could have purely
reflective access to something which is not a mental state or part of one’s mental
state.15 The main idea here is that anything within the scope of our reflective
access are states of mind and certain conscious proprioceptual states, if these
aren’t themselves mental states (e.g., certain joint positions and one’s sense of
location and motion). Since the proponent of ED maintains that seeing that p-
states can be within the scope of our reflective powers, this is a prima facie reason
for thinking that the proponents of ED are committed to the thesis that seeing that
p-states are mental states.16 And in locating the objects of reflective access ‘in the
mind’, proponents of ED are not thereby committed to the metaphysical thesis that
whatever is ‘in the mind’ is behind the skull, or that whatever is ‘in the mind’
supervenes only one’s biological brain and bodily states. In short, in saying that

14
Haddock and Macpherson (2008) describe McDowell’s form of epistemological disjunctivism as taking
seeing that p-states to be sensory mental states. They say: BMcDowell appears to argue that there can be
experiences with such content Bonly because when [our experiences] are the upshot (in a suitable way) of the
fact^ that p (McDowell 1983: 389), our experiences are states of seeing that p^ (Haddock and Macpherson
2008: 8).
15
Indeed, this is heart of the Baccess problem^ for epistemological disjunctivism. See Pritchard (2012) pp. 46–
52. Pritchard’s solution to the access problem is not to accept that one can have knowledge of facts about one’s
environment through reflection alone, but rather that one can come to know, through reflection alone in certain
kinds of good cases (see Pritchard 2012, p. 29 for what he calls the Bgood+ case^), that one’s empirical reason
for p entails that their corresponding belief that p is true.
16
One might think that the following principle is true: for all x, if x is reflectively accessible, then x is a mental
state or constitutively dependent on a mental state (e.g., it’s a property of a mental state). I don’t think this
principle is true. There is a sense of ‘reflectively accessible’ in which numbers and other mathematical and
logical entities and relations are reflectively accessible, but I don’t think that’s yet any reason to think that they
are mental or properties of anything mental. Still, according to proponents of ED, seeing that p-states can be
reflectively accessed, and since there’s no reason whatsoever to think that seeing that p-states are abstract (like
numbers and sets, for example), or, modulo idealism, some state of the non-psychological world, this puts
pressure on proponents of ED to count them as mental states. In short, the reasoning in the main text isn’t
appealing to any general principle linking the reflectively accessible with the mental. Instead, it’s linking the
reflectively accessible with the mental when there are no other good candidates for what the reflectively
accessible state could be.
 Philosophia

proponents of ED should locate the objects of reflective access within the subject’s
mind, this isn’t to say that proponents of ED need to deny externalism about the
mental, that at least some states of mind fail to supervene only on the subject’s
intrinsic states (e.g., states of the subject’s brain and body).
Now one might think that this view is at odds with the transparency of experience.
According to this objection, experience is transparent: introspection of your experi-
ences doesn’t reveal the experience itself or some mind-dependent properties, but rather
aspects of your immediate external environment. Thus, so the objection goes, intro-
spection of your experience at some time is introspection of something non-mental,
namely, aspects of your external environment at that time. So, it’s not the case that what
you come to know by introspective reflection alone is only states of your mind, but
rather states of the external world.
Even if we think that perceptual experience is transparent, in the sense that your
introspection of your experience seems to present your immediate environment to
you,17 this is consistent with such mental states, so understood, not putting you in
a position to know about your immediate external environment. That is, it’s
consistent with the reflective accessibility of such states not implying any knowl-
edge of any specific facts about the non-psychological world. Transparency, after
all, is a property of mental states. Your perceptual experiences can have the
property of being transparent—as seeming to present the external environment
around you—even if, in fact, they fail to reveal your external environment. Put
simply: the transparency of perceptual experience of your external environment
doesn’t entail perceptual knowledge of your external environment.
Moreover, even if, by being transparent, the sensory experience that you have
reflective access to revealed the world around you—revealing, say, a lump of non-
psychological objects, properties, and relations, such as an open bank—this presenta-
tion isn’t sufficient for knowing that the bank is open or even that it’s a bank. Other,
more complex tasks, would need to be undertaken: recognizing the object as a bank (as
falling under the concept bank), or attributing the concept of being open to the seen
object, the object you visually recognize as a bank. Propositional knowledge is a
propositional attitude, even if knowing-how and knowing-where are not. One needs
to grasp a proposition to know that something is so, but one doesn’t need to grasp a
proposition to just see something. This and the epistemic conditions for knowledge
which must be met—believing, and the truth of one’s belief not being the product of
luck—make it hard to see how if one introspects on what their current sensory
experience is like for them, and their experience in fact reveals parts of their external
environment (if one wants to understand the transparency of perceptual experience in
this strong sense: as actually revealing aspects of their environment), this is not
plausibly sufficient for coming to know certain truths about one’s environment. Intui-
tively, you could see an open bank, such that your experience reveals that part of your
environment to you, and you reflect on what it’s like to enjoy such an experience at the
time, whereby you become directed upon the open bank, but nevertheless fail to

17
Not all philosophers of mind think that the transparency of experience should be explained by one’s
experience having representational content. For example, see Martin (2002) for the view that naive realism is
just as well positioned (if not better positioned) to explain transparency as content theories. For work on how
transparency supports content theories of perceptual experience, see Tye (2002)
Philosophia

perceptually know that the bank is open. For you might have run through this task
without yet knowing what an open bank even is. So, the transparency of perceptual
experience is consistent with the idea that when you introspectively reflect on your
current veridical perceptual experience, you don’t thereby come to know about the
world around you.
The argument here is meant to block the view that the kind of introspective
access you have to your seeing that p-states is introspective access to facts
about the environment and your relation to it, but not facts about your mind as
well. The blocking move is meant to explain how reflective access, and knowl-
edge based on that, is possible for the proposition that one sees that p, without
this being a species of self-knowledge or knowledge of one’s mind. I argued
that one might try to make sense of this idea by arguing that some states of
mind are transparent, and that, in veridical cases of perceptual experience, reveal
one’s ordinary external environment. However, I argued that introspective access
to one’s veridical perceptual states wouldn’t be sufficient for propositional
knowledge of one’s environment, even if those states, by being transparent,
reveal one’s environment.
In summary: I’ve argued that proponents of ED ought to view seeing that p-states as
mental states in order to make sense of their commitment to seeing that p-states being
knowable by reflection alone. The trouble for proponents of ED is that this allows the
conclusion of the main argument to stand, and thus puts pressure on the proponent of
ED to either reject the epistemic conception of introspective indiscriminability or the
link between reflective knowledge of one’s mental states with reflective knowledge that
such states aren’t merely ringers.

5 Reflective Knowledge and Knowledge of the Denials

of Error-Possibilities

In the previous section, I defended the thesis that propositional perceptual states, like
seeing that p, are mental states. In particular, I argued that proponents of ED should
take such states to be mental states. This supports (P4), which identifies your mental
state in the good case so characterized as a seeing that p-state.
Premise (P5) connects reflective knowledge of your current mental state with
reflective knowledge of the denials of error-possibilities for that mental state. Applied
to the main argument, it connects knowledge of your mental state—your seeing that p-
state—with knowledge of the denials of potential ringers for that kind of mental state—
such as mere seeming to see that p-states:

(P5) If you are not in a position to know, by reflection alone, in the good case,
that your seeing that p-state is not merely a seeming to see that p-state, then you
cannot know, by reflection alone, in the good case, that you see that p.

(P5) is intuitively plausible. Suppose you believe that your state of mind right now is
what you think it is. For example, perhaps it’s a veridical visual experience of the text
of this paper. Now consider the possibility that you are merely visually hallucinating
this, such that it seems to you just as if you are reading the text of this paper. Intuitively,
 Philosophia

you need to be able to exclude this possibility if you really do know that you are in the
mental state you think you’re in right now.
Although I think (P5) is intuitively plausible, it might lead to intuitional gridlock.
Perhaps some people will find it utterly incredible that knowledge of your current
mental state requires knowledge of the denials of ringers for your current mental state.
In order to avoid intuition-based gridlock, then, we can support (P5) by way of a
closure principle for reflective knowledge—knowledge achieved by reflection alone
(henceforth ‘knowRK’):

Closure PrincipleRK: If you knowRK that P, and you knowRK that P implies Q,
then you are in a position to knowRK that Q.

This supports (P5) as follows. First, suppose you knowRK that you see that p. You
can easily knowRK that you seeing that p implies that you don’t merely seem to see that
p, since you can know by reflection alone that they are incompatible. After all, if you
see that p, you don’t merely seem to see that p. So, by the closure principleRK, you are
in a position to knowRK that you don’t merely seem to see that p. With this principle in
play, we can easily yield the conditional: if you knowRK that you see that p, then you
are in a position to knowRK that you don’t merely seem to see that p (alternatively: that
your seeing that p-state is not merely a seeming to see that p-state). Contraposed, we get
(P5): if you are not in a position to knowRK that you don’t merely seem to see that p,
then you do not knowRK that you see that p (e.g., explicitly: if you are not in a position
to knowRK that your state of mind is not merely a seeming to see that p-state, then you
don’t knowRK that your state of mind is a seeing that p-state).
It is open to the proponent of ED to simply reject (P5), but the cost is the rejection of
the closure principleRK. This would be a strange result for proponents of ED, since on
that view you can knowRK that you see that p. Moreover, knowingRK that such a state is
incompatible with merely seeming to be in that state is intellectually undemanding: it is
not more demanding than knowing that you have hands is incompatible with that
you’re not a handless brain in a vat, which is typically taken to be innocuous. So, it’s
not clear what principled reason would prevent the proponent of ED from thinking that,
given those two facts, you would be in a position to knowRK that the relevant ringer
error-possibility does not obtain (we’ll return to this issue in §7).
Likewise, the closureRK principle should be appealing to anyone who already thinks
that single-premise closure principles are appealing. Indeed, one of Pritchard’s (2012,
2015) methodological constraints is the preservation of various epistemic closure
principles (see Pritchard 2015, where he seeks to preserve closure for knowledge and
‘rationally grounded’ knowledge). And the reasoning in support of (P5) is structurally
similar to the reasoning for the following sorts of conditionals—based on closure
principles—such as that:

& If you know that you have hands, then you know you’re not a handless brain in a vat.
& If you know that there’s a zebra in the pen, then you know it’s not merely a cleverly
disguised mule.

Since the reasoning for (P5) is structurally similar to the reasoning for those
conditionals, by parity of reasoning it’s hard to see why one would accept it in those
Philosophia

cases but not in this case. Finally, acceptance of the closureRK principle and (P5)
needn’t have any skeptical consequences for reflective knowledge, since it doesn’t yet
establish that you cannot knowRK the denials of the ringer hypotheses for your current
mental states. It only seeks to connect knowledgeRK of your mind with knowledgeRK of
the denials of certain error-possibilities for your states of mind, in just the same way
that other closure principles seek to connect knowledge of the world with knowledge of
the denials of certain error-possibilities for your beliefs about the world. In §7, I’ll
return to this premise in order to reply to a potential objection on behalf of the
proponent of ED.

6 Epistemological Disjunctivism and Phenomenal Character Disjunctivism

Metaphysical disjunctivism is the thesis that the nature of your sensory mental state in the
good case is different from the nature of your sensory mental state in the bad case (cf.
French 2016). You can develop this thesis in at least two different ways. One way is to
argue that what your sensory experiences represent in the good and bad cases are different,
and that this difference is sufficient for the experiences to have a different nature. This is
representational content disjunctivism (see McDowell 1995, 1983, 1986). A different way
of developing metaphysical disjunctivism is to argue that your experiences have different
phenomenal properties in the good and bad case, and that this difference is sufficient for
your sensory experiences in those cases to have a different nature. In turn, phenomenal
character disjunctivism is the thesis that the phenomenal character of your sensory mental
state in the good case is different from the phenomenal character of your sensory mental state
in the bad case (cf. Fish 2010: 94). As Fish (2010) highlights, phenomenal character
disjunctivism seems to be at odds with otherwise intuitively plausible ideas about the
introspective indiscriminability of your mental states in the good and bad case:

[…] disjunctivism about phenomenology can […] seem strange: perceptions and
hallucinations are accepted to be indiscriminable. Doesn’t this just entail that they
have the same phenomenal character? (Fish 2010: 95).

Phenomenal character disjunctivists, then, should deny that introspective

indiscriminability is sufficient for the target introspectively indiscriminable states to
have the same phenomenal character. But that raises the following question: how can
the phenomenal character disjunctivist account for the fact that perceptual experiences
and perfect hallucinations are introspectively indiscriminable? To see this, consider a
good case of seeing an x which is F and a bad case of suffering a visual hallucination as
of an x which is F. We might think that both the seeing and the hallucination count as a
visual experience. So, you might think they are introspectively indiscriminable from
each other by virtue of being visual experiences with the same phenomenal properties.
After all, intuitively what it is like for you to undergo either experience is the same.
This is the phenomenal conception of introspective indiscriminability.18 Clearly, phe-
nomenal character disjunctivists cannot accept this view, as they deny that your sensory

18
Farkas (2006) defends this view. For alternative epistemic accounts, see Williamson (2013) and Greenough
(2012).
 Philosophia

experiences in the good and bad cases have the same phenomenal properties. So, the
proponents of phenomenal character disjunctivism will say that a sensory experience m
in the bad case is a sensory experience of an x which is F if and only if m is
introspectively indiscriminable from a veridical sensory perception of an x which is
F. The strategy of the phenomenal character disjunctivist is to say that your experience
in the good case has a certain nature, but your experience in the bad case counts as an
experience only by reference to your experience in the good case. In this way, perfect
hallucinations don’t have a metaphysical nature of their own. Rather, their nature is
parasitic on the nature of your experience in the good case.
Who defends the epistemic conception of introspective indiscriminability? Accord-
ing to naive realists:

[…] the phenomenal character of your experience, as you look around the room,
is constituted by the actual layout of the room itself: which particular objects are
there, their intrinsic properties, such as color and shape, and how they are
arranged in relation to one another and you (Campbell 2002: 116)

In particular:

[…] some sensory experiences are relations to mind-independent objects. That is to

say, taking experiences to be episodes or events, the naïve realist supposes that some
such episodes have as constituents mind-independent objects (Martin 2006: 354)

According to Martin, phenomenal character disjunctivism provides one with a way

of preserving naive realism about the nature of perceptual experience. The disjunctive
element of metaphysical disjunctivism is a thesis about how to understand what sensory
experience is (and, in turn, what the truth-conditions for sensory experience-reports
are). For example, that S has a visual experience as of F should be understood as the
disjunction: either S sees something that is F or it merely visually seems/appears to S
that there is an F. The left-hand side disjunct, the good disjunct, is given a naive realist
characterization: it’s a mental state that is an (at least two-place) relation of conscious
awareness of an ordinary external physical entity (in this case, a relation to an x which
is F). And this external physical entity and one’s relation to it (the conscious awareness
relation to the x which is F) explains the phenomenal character of one’s mental state at
that time. The right-hand side of the disjunct, the bad disjunct, is understood in purely
epistemic terms. In particular, it is understood as a state which is not knowable by
reflection alone to be distinct from the mental state one has in the good case. As Martin
puts it: Bsuch experiences have no positive mental characteristics other than their
epistemological properties of not being knowably different from some veridical
perception^ (Martin 2004: 82).19

19
One might wonder why the epistemic conception should be phrased in terms of knowledge rather than some
other epistemic state. Williamson (2013, 2000) and Martin (2004) put it in terms of knowledge, but even if we
defined introspective indiscriminability in terms of evidence or epistemic reasons, the prima facie inconsis-
tency between the epistemic conception and ED would remain the same. After all, if it follows from the
introspective indiscriminability between the good case mental state and the bad case state that, say, you lack
evidence that the bad case state is not the good case state, that intuitively implies that you don’t know by
reflection alone that bad case state is not the good case state.
Philosophia

What leads the phenomenal character disjunctivist to accept the epistemic concep-
tion over the phenomenal conception of introspective indiscriminability? In rough
outline, the argument goes like this: suppose that the phenomenal character of your
current visual perceptual experience is constituted by some of the visible features of the
external physical objects and properties that you perceive. That is, suppose that naive
realism about your visual experience is true. Now suppose that a visual experience m1
is introspectively indiscriminable from your current visual experience m2 if and only if
m1 has the same phenomenal character as m2. Suppose now that m1 and m2 are
introspectively indiscriminable for you, and that the visual experience you have by
having m1 is an hallucination (that is, the pair m1 and m2 are a bad and good case). It
follows that m1’s phenomenal character is constituted by the visible features of the
external physical objects and properties that you perceive. But this conflicts with the
facts about m1 being a perfect hallucination, whereby there are no candidate external
physical things that you are consciously aware of. Assuming plausible theses about
hallucination, then, it follows that naive realism and the phenomenal conception of
introspective indiscriminability are inconsistent. Since naive realism is a thesis about
the phenomenal character of sensory experience, and an essential part of phenomenal
character disjunctivism, it thereby follows that phenomenal character disjunctivism and
the phenomenal conception of introspective indiscriminability are inconsistent as well.
Now, one might wonder why this should lead one to endorse the epistemic concep-
tion of introspective indiscriminability. There are two reasons. First, proponents of
phenomenal character disjunctivism and naive realism, such as Martin (2004, 2007),
take the epistemic conception as a commitment of phenomenal character disjunctivism.
For example, here’s a representative claim:

[…] the second commitment of disjunctivism: (II) The notion of a visual

experience of a white picket fence is that of a situation being indiscriminable
through reflection from a veridical visual perception of a white picket fence
as what it is (Martin 2006: 363)

The phrase ‘being indiscriminable through reflection’ is to be understood, in

Martin’s words, as B¬◊K[through reflection]^ (Martin ibid). That is, you have a visual
experience of a white picket fence if and only if you cannot know by reflection alone
that it isn’t a veridical perception of a white picket fence.20
Secondly, it’s hard to see how phenomenal character disjunctivism is consistent with
any substantial metaphysical view about why your mental state in the good case is
introspectively indiscriminable from the bad case. As Martin (2004) argues, if there is
any metaphysical property M which is sufficient to explain the nature of your mental
state in the bad case, then M will be explanatorily sufficient in the good case as well.
After all, on pain of explanatory redundancy, why introduce a separate property M* for
the good case specifically if M all by itself could give us a metaphysical explanation of

20
Martin expands on this a follows: BThe situation in which you are knowingly having an hallucination of an
orange is like a Cartesian situation in which you don’t know of the hallucination, because, if we bracket that
additional information, then what is available to you otherwise, i.e. what is available to you in simply
reflecting on your circumstances, does not discriminate between the two situations. As we shall see […] the
import of this restriction and the consequences which flow from it are central to understanding what
disjunctivism is committed to^ (Martin 2006: 365).
 Philosophia

why the bad case is introspectively indiscriminable from the good case? This is a
powerful reason for thinking that there is simply no metaphysical property M in the bad
case which explains why your mental state in that case is introspectively
indiscriminable from your mental state in the good case.
So, even though there might be logical space for views in between the phe-
nomenal concepti on and the epistemic concepti on of introspective
indiscriminability that phenomenal character disjunctivists could endorse—al-
though this is not altogether clear, as per the argument above—paradigm examples
of phenomenal character disjunctivism in the literature insist that the epistemic
conception of introspective indiscriminability is a commitment of their view.21
This leaves us with the following result: if the proponents of ED accept the
phenomenal conception as their account of what it is for two states to be
introspectively indiscriminable from each other, then ED is inconsistent with
phenomenal character disjunctivism as well.
Now, we saw that the proponents of ED who reject the epistemic conception,
or otherwise opt for the phenomenal conception, are committed to the denial of
phenomenal character disjunctivism. This places an interesting restriction on
proponents of ED: they have to be disjunctivists about epistemic rational sup-
port, grounded in perceptual states, as per their view, without being disjunctivists
about the phenomenal character of the perceptual states the rational support is
grounded in. Perhaps the proponent of ED wants to avoid this restriction. If so,
what options are available?

7 Favoring vs. Discriminating Epistemic Support

At least one further option we should explore is the distinction between favoring
epistemic support and discriminating epistemic support (see Pritchard 2010, 2012,
2015). The basic claim is this: the thesis that you cannot know, by reflection alone,
that your current mental state (e.g., seeing that p) is not a ringer for such a state (e.g.,
merely seeming to see that p) is ambiguous between reflective knowledge grounded in
your introspective discriminatory capacities and reflective knowledge grounded in
your favoring evidence. Indeed, Pritchard says this much:

the very idea of two scenarios being introspectively(/reflectively) indistinguish-

able is ambiguous between a reading in terms of discriminating support and a
reading in terms of favouring epistemic support (Pritchard 2012, 96).

So, Pritchard’s reply is that we need to distinguish between introspective

indiscriminability as knowledge by reflection alone grounded in favoring support and
knowledge by reflection alone grounded in introspective discriminating support, and
that my main argument (§3) conflates the two.
To understand this distinction, consider the zebra case (Dretske 1970). In this
case, Zula sees that a zebra is in the pen, but intuitively she is unable to

21
Fish’s (2009, 2008) epistemic view of hallucination is different from Martin’s. For the purposes of this
paper, however, the differences do not matter.
Philosophia

perceptually discriminate between there being a zebra in the pen from there being
a cleverly disguised mule in the pen. Dretske famously denies that Zula is in a
position to know that what she sees is not a cleverly disguised mule. According to
Pritchard (2012), however, Zula only lacks Bdiscriminating support^ for believing
that what she sees is not a cleverly disguised mule, because she is unable to
perceptually discriminate between them. However, on Pritchard’s view, it doesn’t
follow that Zula thereby cannot know that what she sees is not a cleverly disguised
mule. For she has a Bwealth of background knowledge^ about zoos and Bevidence
regarding the likelihood^ of the zoo-keepers replacing the zebra with a mule
painted to just look like a zebra (Pritchard 2012: 79). Once we take into account
Zula’s total evidence, it turns out that she has better evidence that what she sees is
a zebra rather than a cleverly disguised mule: Bit is essential that the agent’s
evidence set incorporates the favoring evidence^ that she has to prefer the zebra
hypothesis over the cleverly disguised mule hypothesis (ibid 79). This favoring
evidence consists in her background inductive and abductive evidence.
We can put the point like this: since Zula knows that the zebra is in the pen, of
course her evidence favors the proposition that the zebra is in the pen over the
proposition that it’s merely a mule disguised to look just like a zebra. However,
this fact doesn’t entail that Zula can perceptually discriminate between zebras and
a range of unlikely alternatives, such as the presence of cleverly disguised mules
made to look just like zebras. And so it doesn’t entail that Zula has discriminat-
ing support for her belief that it’s a zebra in the pen. In brief, the view that you
cannot know that what you see is not a cleverly disguised mule is ambiguous
between two readings:

& Favoring: You cannot know that the zebra isn’t a cleverly disguised mule by way
of your favoring support
& Discrimination: You cannot know that the zebra isn’t a cleverly disguised mule by
way of your discriminatory support.

Pritchard thinks that the favoring reading of the claim is false, but the
discrimination reading of the claim is true. Now, here’s the worry applied to
the case of reflective knowledge of your mental states. You might think that the
distinction between favoring and discriminating support applies just as much to
knowledge of the mind as it does to knowledge of the world. For example, we
can think of introspection or reflection as a kind of Binner perception^ or inner
perception plus belief, where reflective knowledge of one’s occurrent mental
state can be grounded in one’s introspective discriminatory capacities alone; or
that plus one’s favoring evidence (e.g., one’s background knowledge and purely
a priori reasoning).
Proponents of ED can now argue as follows: the cases in which you have
reflective knowledge of your rational support (your seeing that p-state) for
your external world beliefs are cases in which your reflective knowledge is
grounded in favoring support rather than discriminating support. Favoring
support pulls evidence not just from your current psychological time-slice,
such as what you can introspectively discriminate between at that time, but
from various historical factors as well, such as your beliefs about how reliable
 Philosophia

your introspection is in terms of generating true beliefs over false beliefs, and
how likely it would be that you are suffering a hallucination in which it
merely seems to you that you see that p. Moreover, it pulls evidence from
your stored background knowledge. The application of Pritchard’s theory to
the case of reflective knowledge for your mental states would end up looking
like this (where knowRK is reflective knowledge):

& Favoring*: You can knowRK that your seeing that p-state isn’t merely a seeming to
see that p-state by way of your non-empirical favoring support.
& Discrimination*: You cannot knowRK that your seeing that p-state isn’t merely a
seeming to see that p-state by way of your introspective discriminatory support.

So, the proponent of ED will say that (P5) of the main argument can be satisfied if
we understand ‘know, by reflection alone’ as reflective knowledge from non-empirical
favoring support rather than from introspective discriminating support.
Now, intuitively Discrimination* is correct: you cannot introspectively discriminate
between the two states, and thus you cannot reflectively know that they’re different by
those means. That much is granted by everyone. However, Favoring* is less obvious.
Let’s distinguish it from the similar claim that:

& Favoring**: You can know that your seeing that p-state isn’t merely a seeming to
see that p-state by way of your empirical favoring support.

I concede that Favoring** is far more plausible than Favoring*, because the favoring
support you have will be ordinary empirical evidence about the likelihood that you are
suffering an introspectively indiscriminable state, merely seeming to see that you have
hands, say, rather than actually seeing that you have hands. You already know that this
is pretty unlikely, and this background empirical knowledge you have here favors your
belief about your mental state.
My argument targets Favoring* instead. There are at least two interrelated
problems with Favoring* in connection with the main argument. The first problem
registers that proponents of the epistemic conception of introspective
indiscriminability need not accept the distinction between favoring and discrimi-
nating support at the level of reflective knowledge. For reflective knowledge, it’s
much harder to see how the distinction applies. Just consider a mundane case of
reflective knowledge, such as coming to know, by reflection alone, that you
believe that it’s raining outside. It’s hard to see how this knowledge is achieved
without exercising your introspective discriminatory abilities. Intuitively, you
selected and discriminated that belief in two ways: from other states of mind,
such as hoping that p, and from other contents, such as believing that q. If you
were asked: Bhow do you know that you believe that p?^, intuitively you would
cite the fact that you don’t merely, say, hope or wish that p. And you might cite
the fact that you believe that p, rather than some other propositions. This seems to
involve the exercise of your introspective discriminatory capacities. To put another
way: it doesn’t seem like it involves a priori reasoning to the higher-order belief
that you believe that p. Likewise, you did not appeal to a priori evidence which
favors that higher-order belief either. Applied to even a mundane case of reflective
Philosophia

knowledge, then, it’s hard to see how the distinction between favoring and
discriminating support is psychologically realistic.22
The second problem is that, even with that distinction in play for reflective knowl-
edge, it would still follow that the proponent of ED would need to deny the epistemic
conception of introspective indiscriminability, so understood. Now, the proponent of
ED could reply by revising the epistemic conception of introspective indiscriminability
as follows: ‘introspective indiscriminability’ is ambiguous between the impossibility of
knowing any non-trivial differences between mental states by introspective discrimi-
natory support and the impossibility of reflectively knowing any non-trivial differences
between mental states by non-empirical favoring support, such as by a priori reasoning
and any a priori favoring evidence. Here’s how that might look:

Epistemic ConceptionDISC:

For all S, and mental states m, a mental state m1 is introspectively indiscriminable

from m2 for S if and only if S cannot know, by introspective discriminating
support, that m1 is not m2.

Epistemic ConceptionFAV:

For all S, and mental states m, a mental state m1 is introspectively indiscriminable

from m2 for S if and only if S cannot know, by non-empirical favoring support,
that m1 is not m2.

The proponent of ED could then argue that they don’t strictly speaking need to reject
the epistemic conception of introspective indiscriminability. For that conception was
ambiguous between the two versions above. The proponent of ED could then argue that
seeing that p and merely seeming to see that p are introspectively indiscriminable
according to the epistemic conceptionDISC but not according to the epistemic
conceptionFAV. Applied to the main argument, naïve realists and phenomenal character
disjunctivists would maintain that perfect ringers for veridical perceptual states are
states which fulfill the epistemic conceptionDISC. But this is consistent with ED, since
ED maintains that seeing that p is introspectively indiscriminable from merely seeming
to see that p in the sense that it satisfies the epistemic conceptionDISC, but not in the
sense that it satisfies the epistemic conceptionFAV. For the inconsistency to be main-
tained, naïve realists and phenomenal character disjunctivists would need to accept that

22
Boult (2017) registers is a similar worry, but his focus is on the kind of rational support that your
seeing that p-state provides to your external world belief that p. On his view, it would be ad hoc for the
proponent of ED to claim that your seeing that p state provides favoring support but not discriminating support
in such cases, since the epistemic support from seeing that p is most naturally thought of as a kind of
perceptual discriminatory support. I think his worry applies to the case of reflective knowledge as well:
wouldn’t it be ad hoc for the proponent of ED to claim your reflective knowledge of your seeing that p-state
(and that it’s not a merely seeming to see that p-state) is grounded in purely a priori favoring support as
opposed to introspective discriminating support? As I try to make clear in the main text (see also the third
problem below), it’s hard for us to make any sense of what purely a priori favoring support for your reflective
belief that you’re in a seeing that p-state, as opposed to a merely seeming to see that p-state, could be without
relying on introspective discriminatory support.
 Philosophia

the epistemic conceptionFAV is fulfilled by such states as well, and there is no reason to
think that they should do that.
The question is whether the more basic distinction between reflective knowledge
based in non-empirical favoring support and reflective knowledge based in introspec-
tive discriminating support can be sustained. For example, if we cannot find a plausible
case where (i) you reflectively know that you see that p rather than that you merely
seem to see that p without (ii) relying on introspective discrimination, then the case for
the distinction will be substantially undermined.
Let’s consider some options. First, you could competently deduce that your mental
state is not one of merely seeming to see that p from your reflective knowledge that it is
one of seeing that p. The problem is that for the a priori deduction to be successfully
knowledge-generating, you already need reflective knowledge that your state of mind is
one of seeing that p. For example, if you begin with your higher-order belief that ‘I see
that p’ and competently deduce from this ‘I don’t merely seem to see that p’, this raises
the question of how you reflectively know that you see that p in the first place.
Intuitively, you need some piece of non-empirical knowledge or evidence to begin
the deduction with. Otherwise, it’s hard to see why we should count you as a priori
knowing the conclusion unless you have a priori knowledge of the premise. And,
presumably, you don’t reflectively know the premise by way of a priori reasoning
either: for what purely a priori argument would support your belief that you see that p?
Presumably, there is no such argument.
Secondly, they could argue that you reflectively know that your state of mind is
one of seeing that p by virtue of favoring support by some other purely non-
empirical evidence (e.g., not by a priori reasoning). But what purely non-empirical
favoring support could you have for that belief? Perhaps there is a memory of
track record: the fact that every time you introspected to see whether you were in a
factive state of mind in the past, you tended to be in such a mental state. But
notice that this simply pushes the challenge back: for those past cases are just as
much open to the challenge of how you reflectively know, by non-empirical
favoring support, that they occurred as opposed to mere ringers for them. Propo-
nents of ED might reply by positing a reflective factive mental state analogue of
seeing that p: inner perceiving that p.23 The reply would then be: Byou can inner
perceive that you see that p^. This would explain how you initially know, by
reflection alone, that you see that p. The move here is that such inner perception
provides you with non-empirical favoring support for your belief that you see that
p. That such a move is ad hoc notwithstanding, the problem is that the original
challenge simply resurfaces here as well. For there will be a ringer for that kind of
mental state as well—that is, it can merely seem to you that you inner perceive
that you see that p—to which the reply that you can inner perceive that you are
not suffering a mere ringer for inner perception will be an intuitively unsatisfying
response. Finally, it might be that your non-empirical favoring support for your
belief that you see that p is epistemically basic in the sense that it has itself has
23
I chose inner perception, a factive variation of the ‘inner sense’ model of reflective knowledge of one’s
mental states, for the sake of simplicity. However, the discussion could in principle proceed with an
acquaintance account or a transparency account. See Gertler (2017) for a comprehensive discussion. In
general, the discussion can proceed for any way of non-inferentially reflectively knowing which state of mind
your in which admits of introspectively indiscriminable ringers.
Philosophia

favoring support. But I think this is subject to worries about introspective

indiscriminability as well: why isn’t it any more plausible to think that you could
know by reflection alone that you see that p only if you can introspectively
discriminate such states from merely seeming to see that p? In general, the
problem is that it’s hard to see how the proponent of ED will be able to account
for why you reflectively know that you see that p rather than merely seem to see
that p by way of only non-empirical favoring support. At some stage, an appeal to
introspective discrimination seems not only necessary but manifestly advised.
The problem is a very general one for ED. For ED doesn’t give us any account
of what reflective self-knowledge is, even though it crucially relies on reflective
self-knowledge in its account of perceptual knowledge. The epistemic conception
of introspective indiscriminability equates the impossibility of knowing by reflec-
tion alone that, say, your seeing that p-state isn’t a mere seeming to see that p-
state, with the impossibility of introspectively discriminating between them. This
creates trouble for ED because, as I argued in §3, if that view of introspective
indiscriminability is true, then ED is false. The proponent of ED might reply, as
we have seen, that the epistemic conception is ambiguous between a reading on
which you cannot have introspective discriminatory support that one is not the
other, and a reading on which you cannot have purely non-empirical favoring
support that one is not the other. They could accept the former, but deny the latter.
What I have been arguing here is that ED doesn’t give us any account of how you
get the initial purely non-empirical favoring support that your state of mind is one
seeing that p. This makes it look ad hoc that you have it. Indeed, this point is
perhaps even more evident given that one plausible account of how you could get
such reflective knowledge is by way of introspective discrimination. So, propo-
nents of ED need a different story. Since introspective discrimination and a priori-
reasoning based favoring support is ruled out, we might instead look for some
other source of non-empirical favoring support. Inner perception might be one
source, such as inner perceiving that you see that p. The problem I raised for that
kind of reply was that inner perception is a mental state which admits of intro-
spectively indiscriminable ringers as well, and thus the original question of how
you reflectively know which state it is without relying on introspective discrim-
ination just resurfaces. In summary, without an account of reflective knowledge of
your mental states—and, specifically, of your factive mental states—the reply that
such reflective knowledge of your mental states is possible without introspective
discrimination should look ad hoc: like a move made only to escape any theoret-
ical burden rather than a principled account of how such reflective self-knowledge
is possible. Perhaps such a move can be sustained, but so far we haven’t identified
any reason to think that is case.

8 Conclusion

I’ve argued that there is considerable pressure on proponents of ED to reject the

epistemic conception of introspective indiscriminability. This pressure is grounded in
the fact that a commitment of ED is that one can know, by reflection alone, that one
sees that p, together with plausible views about reflective knowledge. I then argued that
 Philosophia

if the proponent of ED moves to endorse the phenomenal conception of introspective

indiscriminability instead of the epistemic conception, then they should reject phenom-
enal character disjunctivism. In short: ED and phenomenal character disjunctivism
wouldn’t be a happy couple. I then considered Pritchard’s distinction between favoring
and discriminating epistemic support, and whether, applied to the case of reflective
knowledge, it could furnish proponents of ED with a satisfactory response to the main
argument. I then raised two principled challenges for this distinction applied to the case
of reflective knowledge, thereby sustaining the main argument.

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