A potential paper topic is the following:

How (if at all) does psychological research concerning the cognitive impenetrability of vision increase or decrease the plausibility of foundationalism as a theory of justification?

In what follows, I sketch some of the most plausible and interesting arguments that I can think of that are relevant to answering this question. My goal here is not to take a stand, but to present some potential ways of thinking through these issues. It’s up to you whether you want to develop these arguments, or come up with your own arguments. (Remember that you can also write about Almeder vs. Churchland or about coherentism, which we’ll discuss next week.) You should feel free to challenge the premises of any argument offered here, and also think about how the arguments relate to each other.

If you plan on using any of these arguments below, make sure that you can motivate each of the premises. Even if you ultimately reject the premise, you should first consider why would a reasonable person find it plausible in the first place. This will help you when you have to walk through these arguments.

First Argument: penetrability falsifies foundationalism

Arguably, here is the clearest way to use the psychological literature with respect to foundationalism:

1. Vision is cognitively penetrable.
2. If vision is cognitive penetrable, then visual beliefs are justified only in relation to other beliefs.
3. If visual beliefs are justified only in relation to other beliefs, then foundationalism is false.
4. :. Foundationalism is false. (From 1-4)

Obviously, Pylyshyn has given us many reasons to question Premise 1. So, if you want to advance this argument, make sure that you can rebut his toughest objection to this premise.

There might also be grounds for challenging Premise 2. What exactly is a visual belief? Also, maybe the psychological literature favoring penetrability only shows that visual beliefs require other beliefs for something other than justification. If so, you should state clearly what this “non-justificatory aspect of vision” is, and explain why it is not justificatory.

Second Argument: impenetrability supports foundationalism

Note that even if this argument is unsound, it doesn’t follow that cognitive impenetrability favors foundationalism. In particular, we might see Pylyshyn as only arguing this much:

1. If vision is cognitive penetrable, then early vision can access relevant expectations, knowledge, and utilities.
2. Early vision cannot access relevant expectations, etc.
3. :. (Early) vision is cognitively impenetrable. (1,2)

We can then see much of his target article as providing detailed arguments for Premise 2, and some of the commentary as challenging this premise. However, those commentators who challenge the very distinction between early vision and cognition might also be challenging Premise 1.

But even if we can work out this argument, how do we get from cognitive impenetrability to foundationalist theories of justification? This requires a further argument:

4. The (non-motor) outputs of early vision are mostly veridical.
5. If the (non-motor) outputs of early vision are mostly veridical and early vision is cognitively impenetrable, then early vision provides a foundation for our knowledge.
6. :. Early vision provides a foundation for our knowledge (3,4,5)

Pylyshyn argues for Premise 4 (largely when discussing “natural constraints.”) Premise 5 seems plausible to me, and, as I mentioned in class, and “mostly veridical” is a very attractive criterion for a basic belief. It’s not as restrictive as incorrigibility, but it’s not as flimsy as prima facie justification.

However, Premise 5 will require some further clarification. In particular, what exactly are the non-motor outputs of early vision? Look this up in Pylyshyn (especially in the section of his response called, “Where is the boundary of early vision?” and the commentaries to which that section refers). Also, what’s “a foundation of knowledge”? Given our goal of putting the psychology into the service of epistemology, there are two big questions we need to answer:

1. Are some (non-motor) outputs of early vision beliefs? In other words, are the non-motor outputs of early vision the kind of things that can be true or false? Or can they only be more or less accurate? (Compare: the belief that a square is in front of a circle can be true or false; however maps are neither true nor false, they are more or less accurate.) If they’re beliefs, then you have basic beliefs! If not, you should challenge the doxastic assumption. Note that Pollock and Cruz already give you a story about non-doxastic versions of foundationalism—parts of it are in Chapter 1, and other parts are in Chapter 2.
2. How much/what kind of information do these outputs convey? Pylyshyn seems to suggest that they are restricted to geometric information. (See if he says more.) But this raises a problem akin to those raised in the “Epistemic Ascent” section of the Pollock & Cruz chapter on foundationalism: will we be able to justify beliefs about physical objects on the basis of a purely geometric output? How can we instantiate arguments (in the Pollock and Cruz sense) from this geometric output all the way up to physical object beliefs?

 

Third Argument: penetrability is irrelevant to foundationalism

Finally, perhaps inspired by Almeder, you might think that psychology and epistemology are mostly independent of one another. Arguing for this is a bit trickier. Here are two strategies:

First Strategy: Go through the two preceding arguments and find faults with both of them.

Second Strategy: Show that all four of the following are possible:

1. foundationalism+impenetrability,
2. foundationalism+penetrability,
3. coherentism+impenetrability,
4. coherentism+penetrability.

Obviously, this will be easier to do once we study coherentism.