Philosophical Review Knowledge Without Observation Author(s): G. N. A. Vesey Source: The Philosophical Review, Vol. 72, No. 2 (Apr., 1963), pp. 198-212 Published by: Duke University Press on behalf of Philosophical Review Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2183104 Accessed: 12/10/2008 12:31 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=duke . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with the scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Duke University Press and Philosophical Review are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Philosophical Review. http://www.jstor.org
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Knowledge Without ObservationAuthor(s): G. N. A. VeseySource: The Philosophical Review, Vol. 72, No. 2 (Apr., 1963), pp. 198-212Published by: Duke University Press on behalf of Philosophical ReviewStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2183104
Accessed: 12/10/2008 12:31
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available athttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless
you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you
may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.
Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at
Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed
page of such transmission.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with the
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Duke University Press and Philosophical Review are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend
IN Section 5 of her book Intention'Miss G. E. M. Anscombe describes
"a rather strange case of causality": a person thinks he sees a face
at the window and this makes him jump. This is said to be a strange
case of causality because "the subject is able to give the cause . . . in
the same kind of way as he is able to state the place of his pain or theposition of his limbs."
What is this way of being able to state something? The answer,
given in Section 8 of the same book, is in terms of a way of knowing
things: "A man usually knows the position of his limbs without
observation."
Why is this knowledge said to be "without observation"?
It is without observation, because nothing shewshim the position of his limbs;it is not as if he were going by a tingle in his knee, which is the sign that it is
bent and not straight. When we can speak of separately describable sensa-tions, having which is in some senseour criterionfor saying something, then we
can speak of observing that thing; but this is not generally so when we know
the position of our limbs.
If this remarkis to be the basis of a definition of "knowledge without
observation," then it must be maintained not only that we can speak
of observing something when we can speak of "separately describable
sensations, having which is in some sense our criterion for saying
something," but also that we cannotspeak of observing something
unlesswe can speak of separately describable sensations, and so forth.
Otherwise, knowledge without observationwould not be differentiated
from knowledge by observation: both could occur in the absence of
separately describable sensations. So, if Miss Anscombe does intend
the remark to afford a definition of "knowledge without observation,"
then she is committed either to denying that when, say, a person sees
that something is red, he is observing that it is red, or to affirming
that even in seeing something to be red there are separatelydescribable
sensations.
If by the word "sensation"is meant something like a tingle (that is,
a bodily sensation), then it is false that I must have such sensations
to be able to state that the thing is red. I might indeed have a peculiar
sensation in my eyes whenever I saw something red, but this would
be accidental. It would not be from having this sensation that I knew
the thing to be red (unless, of course, I was color-blind, and had
learned that when I had this sensation other people would call the
thing I was looking at "red").
Is Miss Anscombe using the word "sensation" so as to include
something else besides bodily sensations? It would seem so. In Section
28 of her book she writes:
It is not ordinarily possible to find anything that shews one that one's leg
is bent. It may indeed be that it is because one has sensations that oneknows this; but that does not mean that one knows it by identifying the sensa-tions one has. With the exterior senses it is usually possible to do this. I meanthat if a man says he saw a man standing in a certain place, or heard someone
moving about, or felt an insect crawling over him, it is possible at least to ask
whether he misjudged an appearance, a sound, or a feeling; that is, we cansay: Look, isn't this perhaps what you saw? and reproduce a visual effect ofwhich he may say "Yes, that is, or could be, what I saw, and I admit I can'tbe sure of more than that"; and the same with the sound or the feeling.
In a footnote, Miss Anscombe adds:
... the fact remains that one can distinguish between actually seeing a man,
and the appearances' being such that one says one is seeing, or saw, a man;and that one can describe or identify "what one saw" on such an occasion
without knowing e.g. that one really saw a reflection of oneself or a coat
hanging on a hook; now when one does so describe or identify "what one
saw," it is perfectly reasonable to call this: describing or identifying an appear-ance.
What is the implication of this for the case of seeing something to be
red? It might seem that it means that Miss Anscombe would say that
seeing something to be red is a case of knowledge by observation
because one can distinguish between how the thing appears to one
and how it in fact is, and describe the former without committing
oneself as to the latter. In other words, it might seem as if Miss
Anscombe meant, by the "separation" involved in her talk of "sepa-
rately describable sensations," the familiar separation of appearancefrom reality.
But this cannot really be what she would say, for she allows of the
same separation in the case of what is said to be known without obser-
vation. A person's leg may feel bent to him when it is lying straight
If a man says that his leg is bent when it is lying straight out, it would beincorrect to say that he had misjudged an inner kinaesthetic appearance as anappearance of his leg bent, when in fact what was appearing to him was his leg
stretched out.
This gives rise to the question, why is it incorrect to say that one
has misjudged an appearance when one's leg feels bent but is not, but
not incorrect to say this when something looks red but is not?
In Intention Miss Anscombe does not say anything which provides
an answer to this question. What she does say is: "This topic is cer-
tainly a difficult one, deserving a fuller discussion."
In a paper, "On Sensations of Position," in Analysis (Vol. XXII,
i962), Miss Anscombe makes a contribution to this "fuller discussion."
In Intention, having introduced the notion of knowledge without
observation with reference to a person's knowledge of the position
of his limbs, she had gone on to say that a person knows without
observation that he has given a reflex kick when a doctor has tapped
his knee. She mentioned the expression, "that sensation which one
has in reflex kicking, when one's knee is tapped." In the Analysis paper
she writes, regarding this expression:
I did not want to object to this use of the word "sensation," but argued thatsuch a "sensation" could not be adduced in defence of the thesis that we doafter all know our bodily movements and positions by observation, becausethe sensation was not separable; elsewhere I implied that a sensation needed to
be "separately describable" if one observed a fact by means of the sensation.
Later she writes:
When I say: "the sensation (e.g. of giving a reflex kick) is not separable" I
mean that the internal description of the "sensation"-the description of thesense-content-is the very same as the description of the fact known; whenthis is so, I should deny that we can speak of observing that fact by means ofthe alleged sensation.
Does what Miss Anscombe says here provide an adequate means of
distinguishing between an object looking red and a leg feeling bent?
Unfortunately it does not. If one is asked to describe how one's leg
feels one gives the same answer ("bent") as one does if asked to
describe the position of one's leg. But, equally, if one is asked todescribe the appearance of something which looks red, one gives the
same answer ("red") as one does if asked to describe the object itself.
The formula "separately describable sensations" simply will not do
the work Miss Anscombe wants it to do.
The only remaining hint as to what Miss Anscombe means is
contained in the final paragraphs of the Analysis article. She says
person capable of the relevant kind of borrowed-meaning knowledge
could understand it. Anyone else would either not understand it, or
misunderstand it. In this respect appropriated-meaning knowledge
is like proper-object knowledge. (It differs from proper-object knowl-
edge in that what is known is not the proper object of the mode of
perception in operation, being dependent for its existence on the
conditions which make borrowed-meaning knowledge possible.)
A person who has merely borrowed something is answerable to the
person from whom he has borrowedit. A personwho has appropriated
something does not acknowledge any such obligation. He has taken
the thing over. Originally it belonged to the other person, but now,
through his having appropriatedit, it is his. These features, interpreted
in terms of meaning, are the features of an appropriated-meaning
description.
Let me now try to give body to this abstract account, with examples.
Suppose that I hear the source of a sound to be to my right, and that
this is not an instance of association-mediatedperception.I may describe
what I am aware of by saying that the source of the sound is to my
right. In that case what I say would be understood by a person whowas incapable of locating sounds merely by listening. But I might have
said that thesound s comingrom my right.This, I submit, could not be
properly understood by a person incapable of locating sounds merely
by listening.
In an article, "The Location of Sound," in Mind (LXVI, I957),
Mr. B. O'Shaughnessy writes:
Reality might conceivably have been such that no creature of any sort ever
at any time located sounds merely by listening to them. This would mean thatsounds would be said to have locality rather in the way in which smells have,so that we would make use of criteria like: (i) what produces the sound,(ii) does the sound grow louder as we get close to what we take to be its origin?
Suppose that just one person was able to locate sounds merely by
listening to them. He might say that he heard a sound as coming from
his right. People hearing him might say to him, "You mean you hear
a sound which is such that you can tell that the object producing
it is to your right, for example, that it is the sound made by trafficand you know the main road to be to your right." If he said that this
was not what he meant, they might say to him, "You mean you hear a
sound and, in some way which can be explained only by the psychol-
ogists, you just know that it is produced by some object to your
right." If he said, "No, I hearthe soundas comingrom myright," they
would be as much at a loss as we should be if someone said he smelled
Consider, for instance, what Descartes says on this topic in his lettersto PrincessElizabeth von der Pfalz. In a letter dated 21 May i643, he
wrote:There are two facts about the human soul on which there depends any knowl-edge we may have as to its nature: first, that it is conscious; secondly, that,being united to a body, it is able to act and suffer along with it. Of the secondfact I said almost nothing [in the Meditations];my aim was simply to make thefirst properly understood; for my main object was to prove the distinctionof soul and body; and to this end only the first was serviceable, the secondmight have been prejudicial.
How are we to understand the manner in which the soul is "unitedto a body"? In his letter of 28 June i643, Descartes answered thisquestion as follows:
What belongs to the union of soul and body can be understood only in anobscure way either by pure intellect or even when the intellect is aided byimagination, but is understood very clearly by means of the senses. Conse-quently, those who never do philosophise and make use only of their senseshave no doubt that the soul moves the body and the body acts on the soul;
indeed they consider the two as a single thing, i.e. they conceive of theirunion; for to conceive of the union between two things is to conceive of themas a single thing.
Later in the same letter he wrote:
It seems to me that the human mind is incapable of distinctly conceiving boththe distinction between body and soul and their union, at one and the sametime; for that requires our conceiving them as a single thing and simultane-
ously conceiving them as two things, which is self-contradictory. I supposedthat your Highness still had very much in mind the arguments proving thedistinction of soul and body; and I did not wish to ask you to lay them aside,in order to represent to yourself that notion of their union which everybodyalways has in himself without doing philosophy-viz. that there is one singleperson who has at once body and consciousness, so that this consciousnesscan move the body and be aware of the events that happen to it.
I suggest that what Descartes meant when he said that the soul and
body are "united," and that this is something which is "understoodvery clearly by means of the senses," could be expressed as follows.
It is not the case that, when I feel a touch as a touch on some part of
my body, this is association-mediated perception.And it is not the case
that, when I move some part of my body, my knowledge that that
part of my body is in motion is association-mediated knowledge. In
neither case do I first have to learn of the association of one thing,