9

Perception and Its Givenness

Aude Bandini

Introduction

One of the crucial issues raised by the normativity of perception is the

problem of the epistemological bearing of perceptual experience on
human knowledge. There are obviously at least some of our beliefs, for
instance my belief that there is a teapot on my desk right now, that are
based on what we see or touch in such a way that it seems perfectly justi-
fied or reasonable to entertain these beliefs. But what is it in perceptual
experience that grounds the rationality of such observational beliefs?
How should we explain the epistemic authority that we spontaneously
ascribe to perceptual content?
The account I wish to offer in this regard involves the recovery of
a notion that has fallen into disrepute within analytical philosophy:
the notion of the given. Recent works in the theory of knowledge and
perception prefer to use the concept of perceptual content. The given
had its glory days, however, back in the 1930s. Yet it fell in disgrace after
Wilfrid Sellars launched his scathing attack against the so-called ‘myth
of the given’, so much so that the phrase ‘myth of the given’ is now
certainly more popular than the given itself. Yet, I do not think that
this notion is null and void, in particular if one pays sufficient attention
to the metaphorical charge it conveys. When one invokes perceptual
content and forgoes any reference to its being given, something gets lost
at the expense of our understanding of perception as a genuine means
to access the world. I argue that this element is of a phenomenological
nature and plays, nevertheless, a crucial role in the rationality of percep-
tual beliefs.
I will first revisit the views of two of the leading proponents of the
given in the analysis of perceptual knowledge and suggest that the

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M. Doyon et al. (eds.), Normativity in Perception

© Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited 2015
162 Aude Bandini

epistemic authority of perception is closely related to its specific mode of

conscious apprehension, namely its givenness. I will then try to substan-
tiate and defend this view against two different objections, including
that of Sellars.

1 A plea for the given

I take it that the philosophical rationale for resorting to the notion

of the given is twofold: first, there exists an epistemological concern
about the foundations of empirical knowledge and the justificatory role
played by basic perceptual or observational beliefs in its constitution;
second, there also exists a descriptive and phenomenological endeavor
to capture the distinctive features of perception as a genuine encounter
between mind and world. Arguments of both nature are often lumped
together and occur indiscriminately; they need to be disentangled and
then scrutinized in order to be appraised each in their own right.
We shall begin with the first argument, which is transcendental in
nature. Surprisingly enough, within early analytical philosophy the
appeal to the given is not associated with empiricism but foremost with
a Kantian legacy. This is particularly clear in the works of Clarence I.
Lewis, a former Kant scholar1 and then Harvard professor who devoted
the second chapter of his influential Mind and the World Order (1929,
second edition 1956) to an inquiry and definition of ‘the given element
in experience’. In a very Kantian way, Lewis maintains that ‘[t]he two
elements to be distinguished in knowledge are the concept, which is the
activity of thought, and the sensuously given, which is independent of
such activity.’ (1956, p. 37) In this inaugural work and elsewhere,2 the
given occurs at first as an a priori outcome of a transcendental analysis
of knowledge. More specifically, the argument goes, a given element
in perception is required in order to account for the mere possibility of
empirical thought and justification. For instance, for seeing the cat on
the mat to be a good reason to believe that the cat is on the mat, which
is usually the case, there must be some given element in perception such
that: (1) there is an object or content that the judgment is about, other-
wise the latter would remain empty; (2) the resulting belief is therefore
grounded or justified. As Lewis famously puts it: ‘If there be no datum
given to the mind, then knowledge must be contentless and arbitrary;
there would be nothing which it must be true to.’ (Ibid., pp. 38f.) There
must be some independent datum to be taken by thought as its object;
for otherwise it would be contentless, and not even a thought. In that
respect, Henry H. Price, a British proponent of the given, challenges
 Perception and Its Givenness 163

anyone claiming that there is no given at all to explain how we can

think without having something to think about. This subject or subject-
matter about which we think must be somehow brought before the
mind if we are to think about it, and it cannot always be brought there
by previous thinking, or we should have an infinite regress. This means
that something must be given. (1950, p. 7)
However, as it stands, this argument does yet not prove that the given
has any epistemic authority at all and is thus suitable for stopping the
epistemological vicious regress of justification (for, how can you be so
sure that you are actually seeing the cat on the mat?). At best, the given
puts an end to the psychological regress of content. But there is nothing
there to warrant the cognitive value of that content, not to mention
the truth-value of the corresponding belief and the alleged rational link
that leads from perception to belief. Therefore, the a priori argument is
perhaps necessary; yet it is certainly not sufficient to account for the
normative source of justification in experience. As Michael Williams
(1999, pp. 25–69) suggests, the transcendental appeal to the given is
fraught with so many sophisticated epistemological presuppositions –
those of epistemological foundationalism – that it hardly amounts to
more than preaching to the already converted: hence the urge to appeal
to some different and complementary argument.
Besides the a priori requirement previously mentioned, the idea of
the given is indeed usually typically motivated by some a posteriori and
phenomenological considerations regarding the concrete nature of
perception, aiming at capturing the distinctive characteristics of empir-
ical experience as a genuine encounter with – or ‘openness to’3 – the outer
world and its mind-independent objects, in contrast with, say, reasoning
or imagining. Whereas the sensuous criterion is most often put forward
when the given is concerned, Lewis insists that it is neither the only one,
nor the most relevant to capture its singularity. Its distinctive feature lies
rather in its invariance and its constitutive independence and robust-
ness with regard to the mind’s activity. Thus, in a negative way, the
given is first and foremost that ‘which remains untouched and unal-
tered, however it is construed by thought. Yet no one but a philosopher
could for a moment deny this immediate presence in consciousness of
that which no activity of thought can create or alter.’ (Lewis, 1956, p. 57)
As a matter of fact, the ordinary objects of perception appear as being
independent both from our thought and awareness. As Russell wittingly
pointed out, it is because we suppose that our cats exist on their own,
whether we perceive or think about them or not, that the fact that they
get hungry between one meal and the next makes sense. Otherwise, it
164 Aude Bandini

would ‘seem odd that appetite should grow during no-existence as fast
as during existence.’4 Even if the hardcore idealist finally turned out to
be right, she should still account for the fact that in experience, we do
perceive objects as if they were mind-independent.
Thus, the presence and robustness of the given support both the
descriptive and ontologically realist idea that the mind can gain access
to some independent and substantial reality through perception and
the epistemological foundationalist view that perception endows the
subject’s thought with some sort of raw content that is non-arbitrary,
and henceforth exerts a normative constraint on her web of beliefs. This
normative force has traditionally been ascribed to the experience of
intuitive and unquestionable self-evidence. There is indeed something I
obviously cannot possibly doubt when I feel or experience, say, a tooth-
ache: namely, that I am experiencing a toothache, a specific kind of
pain from which I can perhaps distract my attention to some extent,
but which I cannot get rid of, or change into something of a different
nature at will, so to speak. How could I doubt what I am clearly and
immediately aware of? Perception seems to be responsive to how things
actually are in a way thought is clearly not, since whereas I can think of
things in their absence, I can only see, touch or taste them when they are
right here, present and given to me. Otherwise, it is not a genuine case
of perception.5 In that sense, the given is self-evident, certain, and its
apprehension is infallible. But what are we exactly justified in believing
on such a basis?
According to what Howard Robinson notoriously labeled ‘the
Phenomenal Principle’, the given deserves to be acknowledged as epis-
temically significant: ‘If there sensibly appears to a subject to be something
which possesses a particular sensible quality, then there is something of
which the subject is aware which does possess that sensible quality.’
(1994, p. 32) However, this Phenomenal Principle is often rejected
because it does not account for the difference between veridical percep-
tion and illusion – or worse, hallucination: in the well-known Müller-
Lyer illusion, for instance, it sensibly appears to the subject that one of
the shafts of the two arrows is shorter than the other; yet both of them
are actually of equal length. So, strictly speaking, there is no such thing
the subject is aware of that does actually instantiate that sensible prop-
erty: hence the illusion. As a consequence, the Phenomenal Principle
must be fallacious: my perception of an object O with the property f does
not entail that there is, right here, an object O that is f. I do not think,
however, that this objection, though relevant against naïve or direct
realism, ruins the more general idea that the given has a normative force,
 Perception and Its Givenness 165

quite the opposite. Actually, the Müller-Lyer illusion would simply not
happen and would not be so disturbing, if there were nothing in what
we perceive that somehow forces us to judge that the perceived shafts
are of different lengths, even once we clearly know that it is actually
not the case. For instance, I could draw very carefully the Müller-Lyer
arrows in my philosophy of perception class, use a ruler to be sure that
both shafts are of equal length, and then take a few steps back from the
blackboard to check whether the trick works from my students’ vantage
point. Usually it does, and I find myself deceived, to some extent, as
much as they are. This happens because whereas all of us may eventually
either disbelieve or at least suspend our judgment, in any case, when we
look at the blackboard there is still something that is straightforwardly
given to us that our thought can neither alter nor correct, and which
gives rise to some intriguing intellectual embarrassment. Thus, despite
appearances to the contrary, the persistent perceptual illusion turns out
to be the best case for highlighting the epistemic authority of the given
via its immediate presence, robustness, or invariance with regard to our
will, thought, and even knowledge.6 Given the way a standard human
perceptual and cognitive system works, empirical psychologists would
agree that it is not by accident that one experiences and spontaneously
tends, or is disposed, to believe what one experiences or believes when
one is confronted with such textbook cases as the Müller-Lyer illusion.
Consequently, although the question of whether the direct objects of
perception are ordinary physical objects or rather some intermediate
appearances (sense-data, for instance) may still be debatable; the gist of
the Phenomenal Principle argument remains intact: there is obviously
something in perception that non-accidentally forces or constrains our
empirical beliefs or, more precisely, our rational acceptance, and as a
result provides a fundamental and primitive kind of knowledge that is
genuinely direct or non-inferential, and consequently unquestionable –
that is to say, true.
What does this have to do with the traditional a posteriori argument
for the given? I suggest that perception draws its epistemic authority
from the way it is apprehended or, in this case, the way it is forced or
imposed upon us, rather than from the content it conveys as such (the
same content which could appear in a belief). To avoid any further
ambiguity, let us then make a distinction between (1) the given as content
or object – that which is given, presented or provided by perceptual
experience and whose structure we shall leave in some relative obscu-
rity for now; and (2) the givenness, as the specific, vivid, robust, non-
discursive and non-inferential ‘mode of presentation’ or vehicle of this
166 Aude Bandini

content when brought about before the mind as we perceive the objects
in the surroundings. The givenness crucially involves some passivity
or receptivity on the subject’s side. We are now in a better position to
appreciate the relevance of Sellars’ diagnosis in the opening lines of
Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind: various things have been said to
be given in the history of philosophy, from sense-data to first principles,
physical objects, abstract entities, or propositions. They all pertain to
the pervasive ‘framework of givenness’ only to the extent that they are,
though perhaps wrongly, construed as the correlate of some intellectual
intuition, a pure receptivity rather than a mental act, strictly speaking,
in which none of the subject’s spontaneous, discursive, or conceptual
capacities are either involved or required. All that these givens have
in common is the phenomenally specific way they are taken or appre-
hended by the subject’s mind: their givenness. This means that given-
ness, as I view it and as it is pictured, though perhaps only implicitly,
in the writings of its proponents, pertains to the perceptual experience
itself (what does it feel to perceive or to have a perceptual experience)
rather than to the objects that are perceived.7 At least in first person and
under ordinary circumstances (as far as the subject knows, there are no
mirrors, no drugs were given to her, no evil demon and no mad scientist
is trying to deceive her, and so on), givenness through perception is
reasonably appraised as a reliable – though always fallible – indicator of
a genuine openness of one’s mind to the world, an openness that allows
for the acquisition of justified beliefs.
If I am right, both the a priori and a posteriori arguments that tradi-
tionally support the appeal to the given in the theory of knowledge
and perception appear not only to be coherent, but even to support
one another: the transcendental argument insists that for empirical
knowledge to be possible at all, there must be an epistemic stopping
point in the regressive chain of justifications, while the a posteriori argu-
ment holds that this stopping point is no mystery at all, and provides a
phenomenological criterion of not the given as content itself, but of the
specific direct relation – givenness through perception – we have with it.
If the given is imposed on our mind through perceptual experience, the
prior source of justification for our empirical beliefs is provided by the
specific phenomenal modality of givenness: immediacy, presence, unal-
terability – that is to say, mind-independence. These features, pertaining
to the modality rather than to the content of the given, are in the final
analysis the constitutive features and the genuine epistemically signifi-
cant elements provided by perception. Within the analytic tradition,
great emphasis has recently been put on the question of the structure
 Perception and Its Givenness 167

and semantical features of perceptual content (is it propositional?, is it

conceptual?, and is it then intentional?), somehow diverting the atten-
tion from the phenomenological aspects of perception, as if they were
more or less irrelevant or misleading for epistemological inquiry. Yet,
it seems highly unlikely that the given content may remain the same
whether it is perceived or not (whether it is perceived or just thought
about). To put it another way, and using the distinction previously
marked, givenness must be taken into account simply because without
givenness, there is obviously no given per se. Any attempt to understand
the normativity of perception, and specifically its epistemic authority,
while ignoring or abstracting its object from its specific mode of presen-
tation, is doomed to failure.

2 Epistemic given: neither a will-o’-the-wisp nor a myth

Needless to say, our conception of the normative force of the given

is challengeable. As a matter of fact, the given was already deemed a
controversial notion by the time it was introduced in the philosophical
lexicon of early analytical philosophy. Later on, Sellars’ famous argu-
ment against ‘the myth of the given’ seemed to sign its death warrant,
and to a large extent the use of ‘content’ has now superseded that of
‘given’ within the philosophy of perception and the theory of knowl-
edge. This is probably due to the frequent, though misleading, associa-
tion of the given with the much criticized theory of sense-data.8 Despite
the disgrace they fell into to some extent, I will stick to the words ‘given’
and ‘givenness’ because of their metaphorical charge, and I will attempt
to address at least two of the main objections raised against them.
The first suspicion generated by the given is ontological and hence-
forth epistemological. Granted that knowledge requires judgment, and
judgment requires both a given content (‘a’) and some conceptual cate-
gorization (‘a is F’), it is impossible to know anything about the given
itself (‘a’), so to say in all its purity, unqualified and taken in isolation
from whatever concepts the mind actively applies to it. Then how can we
be certain that our categorization is correct? Even the most careful anal-
ysis of knowledge cannot lead us beyond its own (conceptual) bounda-
ries: wherever there is knowledge, there is judgment, and henceforth no
untouched given anymore. To qualify the given content as real is already
the outcome of a cognitive and conceptual activity of the subject. Now,
as Lewis emphasizes, this does not mean that we should refuse the idea
of its independent existence: what we only need to acknowledge is that
the mere apprehension or intuition of the given does not constitute in
168 Aude Bandini

itself knowledge. In other words, there is no knowledge ‘by acquaint-

ance’: the idea of such a non-propositional and non-conceptual knowl-
edge is highly dubious, if not non-sense.9
To be sure, we can note, feel, and eventually admit the given’s pres-
ence or inalterability in perceptual experience. However, as soon as we
attempt to know more about it, we do not have any choice but to judge,
categorize or, to use Lewis’ phrase, conceptually interpret. So, in a sense,
we are bound to lose sight of the given. As Price argues:

if we attempt to describe any so-called datum, e.g. this view which I

now see, the very act of describing alters it. […] Thus every attempt to
describe the given is bound to fail. But if we cannot describe it, i.e. say
what characters it has, we obviously do not know it. (1950, p. 13)

Hence, just as the Kantian thing-in-itself, the given-in-itself shall remain

unknowable and ineffable.10 It is some sort of theoretical will-o’-the-
wisp that recedes as one tries to approach and seize it. Then how can it
be, as Lewis insisted, that ‘what knowledge must be true to’? How may
it determine, even to the smallest extent, its own conceptual interpreta-
tion and thus non-arbitrarily constrain our judgments and beliefs?
Falling prey to this objection would lead us straightforwardly to
some kind of transcendental realism or phenomenalism: the thesis that
the direct objects of our perceptual awareness are some intermediate
entities (sense-data or appearances) whose ontological and epistemic
statuses remain quite controversial. Now, we shall try to preserve, as
far as possible, common sense realism: namely, the idea that our usual
objects of perception are the physical things we meet in our surround-
ings (tables, sunsets, and perhaps prime-ministers) and, on the other
hand, account for the fact that perceptual experience can provide us
with immediate justification or good reasons to believe.
A plausible realist answer to the ontological aspect of the objection,
suggested by Price, would then amount to blaming it for resting on the
very dubious assumption that ‘if I know or believe that something has a
certain nature, it follows that it cannot possibly have the nature that I know
or believe it to have.’ (Ibid., p. 13) Indeed, the traditional distinction
between the receptivity and the spontaneity of the mind seems to entail
that while the given in intuition is, in a sense, objective, the categories
under which it is subsumed when a judgment is made are subjective.
On the other hand, a large number of faculties are certainly involved
in the process of judging, describing and knowing, such as attention,
memory, imagination, and the like. As a result, knowing is expected
 Perception and Its Givenness 169

to substantially affect the nature of the given, turning it from a datum

to a cognoscendum. In other words, the objection goes, the price to pay
for making the given knowledgeable through a conceptual articulation,
is its irreversible transformation into something thoroughly different.
Now, this cannot be true. The character of presence and inalterability (or
givenness) associated with my perception’s contents suggests strongly
enough that, however complex the mental resources and process
involved in judgment may be, my thought cannot cause nor involve
any genuine change in those objects’ intrinsic properties, since they do
not belong to my own predicates. Even the most convinced idealist ‘can
hardly mean to deny that the fact of my seeing at this moment a sheet
of white paper instead of a green tree is a datum which is beyond the
power of my thought to alter.’ (Lewis, 1956, p. 45) Thus, in no way the
fact that I judge that A is B or describe A as B can by itself involve that
A cannot be B. Of course, my judgment and description might be wrong,
but except if there is some evil demon abusing me, my mistakes are then
accidental, not necessary.11
The epistemic counterpart of this somewhat atomistic ontology is
the view that knowing does not alter its object: during the process of
knowledge,

I do not do anything to the object before me. I find relations within

it. I discover that it possesses various characteristics […]. But those
relations and characteristics were there before I discovered them. The
only change that has occurred is a change in myself. I was ignorant,
and now I know. (Price, 1950, p. 17)

As naïve or simplistic as it may sound, this conception of the mind as a

mirror of nature is nevertheless a pretty fair view of our ordinary expe-
rience, as perceiving and knowing beings. And there is probably more
than meets the eye in the long-standing empiricist idea that empirical
knowledge is crucially subject to the ‘tribunal of experience’: that is to
say, of things as they are in the world.
Jim Pryor, for instance, talks about the ‘phenomenal force’ that is
distinctive of perceptual experience and ascribes to it a role in the expla-
nation of our beliefs’ immediate justification:

[o]ur experience represents propositions in such a way that it ‘feels

as if’ we could tell that those propositions are true – and that we’re
perceiving them to be true – just by virtue of having them so repre-
sented. […] I think this ‘feeling’ is part of what distinguishes the
170 Aude Bandini

attitude of experiencing that p from other propositional attitudes,

like belief and visual imagination. Beliefs and visual images might
come to us irresistibly, without having that kind of ‘phenomenal
force’. (2000, p. 547)12

Once again, the stress is not put on the representational content as such,
but on the way this content is given to us. The same unaltered content
(a proposition according to Pryor) occurs as the object of perceptual
experience and as the object of judgment (this proposition is true). The
relation holding between the perception and the corresponding judg-
ment looks non-inferential, irresistible as it were, and non-arbitrary
or contingent, but constitutive. I think Price is trying to pinpoint the
same ‘feeling’ or ‘phenomenal force’ when he depicts the specific way
cognitive states (that are clearly aiming at truth) occur in us, as it were,
non-inferentially and without any consideration of evidence, as we
experience our surrounding environment: perceptual consciousness
immediately throws us in a specific state of mind that he calls, with
Cook Wilson, ‘being under an impression that’.

In ‘being under an impression’ we simply jump straight from the

awareness of A to the thought of B, without any preliminary
wondering or considering of evidence, indeed without any rational
process whatever. […] And as there has been no consideration of
evidence, so there is no consciousness that we may be wrong; one
just has not raised the question whether one is liable to be wrong or
not. (Price 1950, pp. 140f.)

It is, of course, quite difficult not to charge Price with falling prey to
blunt dogmatism. But a thought experiment might help to grasp
what both Pryor, and before him Price, are up to:13 suppose someone
whose perceptual and cognitive capacities are normal, but who would
be deprived of the capacity to feel or experience the specific phenom-
enology of perception. She would lack the sense of what it is to perceive,
although she knows what believing, daydreaming, or assuming are like.
We would here have the case of an individual who would perceive and
perhaps know what she is perceiving, without being phenomenally
aware that she is perceiving. In which cognitive state would she be
when facing, say, a glass of water? Contemporary psychiatry indicates
that some patients affected by depersonalization-derealization disorders
have a sense that the objects around them are not real and feel like they
live in a dream. It seems to me that this would be the situation of the
 Perception and Its Givenness 171

subject of our thought experiment: deprived of the feeling of givenness

(as I characterized it in the first section), she would find herself in a
world of deceitful appearances, scattered with cardboard characters and
stage sets, always threatening to be only two-dimensional. As a result,
whereas our subject would be able to categorize and say what it is that
she is seeing, she would remain in some kind of state of disbelief, being
reluctant to describe the objects or states she perceives as real.
Givenness is then a crucial phenomenal aspect of perceptual experi-
ence, though it cannot properly be said to be seen (nor heard nor tasted
as such).14 It is rather a character of perceptual awareness. As I see it,
givenness clearly pertains to what Tim Crane defines as the ‘phenom-
enological conception’ of the content of experience, by contrast with its
‘semantical conception’. Whereas the semantical conception consists in
associating the perceptual content to some abstract or general proposi-
tion, in order to describe the particular event or fact that it may or may
not correctly represent (say, a cat on the mat), the phenomenological
conception is attentive to all that is conveyed to the subject as she is
perceiving an object or fact, including its phenomenological dimension.
Most notably, that latter view is sensitive to ‘the particularity of the
subject’s own condition’, and to the fact that the perceptual content is
unrepeatable because essentially linked to the state and time of the act’s
occurrence, and specific to its bearer. In this sense of content, no one
other than me can have mental episodes with the content of my mental
episodes. (Crane, 2013, p. 240)
Givenness is part of the perceptual content in this phenomenological
sense. Now, whereas it cannot outlive our present perceptual experience,
to some extent it can outstrip the actual content of a given experience:15
when I see an object, usually I feel as if it is given to me as a whole, even
with the sides that are perhaps currently hidden from my sight right
now. This is another crucial element that the subject of our thought
experiment was lacking: more is given (or felt as given) than one directly
perceives. Strange as it may seem, this specificity of what it feels to have
a visual perception is pretty easy to account for. Even a proponent of
sense-data theory would agree that in ordinary perception, the percep-
tual content is never only momentarily given or in pure isolation. As
Lewis argues, the given is always already interpreted in experience,
and part of this interpretation is determined by the relations we take
as holding between that content and other contents which were either
already given to us, or which we regard as possibly though not yet actu-
ally given. Thus, Lewis concludes, ‘the given is set in a relation with a
to-be-given or could be given, and this setting is an interpretation of
172 Aude Bandini

it which the temporal process of experience may verify or prove erro-

neous.’ (Lewis, 1956, p. 51) Thus, it is the whole set of actual and poten-
tial givens which provides the empirical object, appraised as ‘real’ and
present throughout experience. Henceforth, the interpretation of the
given which gives rise to the whole picture of what it is like to perceive
a ‘real’ objet as common sense views it, is (1) predictive and probable
only, hence always fallible; (2) based not only on what is being actually
given, but also on what was given and on what is ‘givenable’ or available
for further perceptions, for example if the subject decides to act or move
around. Givenness is thus liable to explain the fact that we sometimes
take for real or existing things that are beyond our actual perceptual
means, from microbes to distant galaxies.
If all of this makes sense, we may move forward and address the issue
of the epistemic authority one may reasonably ascribe to perception
(including its character of givenness) in connection with the second
main objection that has been raised against the idea of an intrinsic
normativity in perceptual content: Sellars’ attack against the so-called
myth of the given.
The very core of Sellars’ argument consists in emphasizing that the
notion of the given is nothing but the chimerical outcome of a mix
between two incompatible epistemological requirements: epistemic inde-
pendence on the one hand, and epistemic efficaciousness on the other.16
Prima facie, the given might successfully claim the property of being
epistemically independent, i.e. known directly and non-inferentially: all
I need to know that the cat is on the mat, is my seeing that the cat is
on the mat, nothing more. I do not need to use any of my other beliefs,
knowledge, or cognitive resources to rationally get there. In a more
restricted sense of the given, one may even say that in order to know
that there is something blue out there, I do not even have to call for any
of my conceptual capacities: I just have to see something blue out there,
and this is merely given to me through perception. Apprehending the
given is then something we have simply in virtue of being conscious,
so it is independent of any particular cognitive abilities and cannot be
taken to presuppose the possession of any such abilities. On the other
hand, due to its epistemic independence, the apprehension of the given
and the perceptual knowledge it immediately gives rise to are both
unchallengeable, providing the stopping point to the regress of justifi-
cation: they are self-evident or, so to speak, epistemically autonomous;
hence, they are also epistemically efficacious: that is to say, they can
suitably occur as premises in an inference. Thus the given apprehension
is liable to directly provide a rock-bottom layer of beliefs that are not
 Perception and Its Givenness 173

open to revision and upon which the whole edifice of empirical knowl-
edge can rest. All our further beliefs about the world gain their positive
epistemic status from the epistemic relations they bear, either directly or
inferentially with them.
Now, as Sellars insists in Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind, it
simply cannot be the case that a cognitive state is both epistemically
independent and epistemically efficacious. For epistemic efficacy can
only be gained through holding some rational justification relations
with other cognitive states: nothing can justify a belief except another
justified belief, and so on. Yet the apprehension of the given is not,
in itself, a cognitive state. It is a fact, and although it can be the truth
bearer of the corresponding perceptual belief, it is clearly not some-
thing that is itself liable to be true or false. It simply exists, and as such
it may cause a belief, but no more than a chair or a tree is it a reason
to acquire, entertain, or revise one. Hence, no matter how it is viewed
(as a particular sense impression or as a fact), the given is epistemically
inert. To be efficacious, it should be epistemically dependent, that is
to say not merely given. Sellars does not mean that nothing is given:
to be sure, we do experience sensuous content and those conscious
perceptions are neither conceptual nor do they involve the actualiza-
tion of our conceptual capacities. But they are not intentional (they do
not represent anything) and have no epistemic authority whatsoever.
Henceforth, as basic and irresistible as they seem to be, our perceptual
beliefs remain open to revision, as the cases of illusion or hallucination
demonstrate.
Of course, Sellars’ refutation rests on a strong commitment to episte-
mological internalism and normativism:

the idea that epistemic facts can be analysed without remainder –

even ‘in principle’ – into non-epistemic facts, whether phenomenal
or behavioural, public or private […] is, I believe, a radical mistake – a
mistake of a piece with the so-called ‘naturalistic fallacy’ in ethics.
(2000, p. 209)

By contrast, defending the view I propose, namely that the phenom-

enal aspect of perception (its content givenness) is the crucial bearer of
its epistemic force, supposes that some essential concessions are made
in favor of an externalist or reliabilist conception of justification.17 But
Sellars’ argument about the myth of the given should give us pause.
If the phenomenal experience of givenness (presence, inalterability, or
robustness) causally prompts a perceptual belief, is it always reasonable
174 Aude Bandini

to entertain such a belief and to persevere in the cognitive state that

Price labeled ‘being under the impression that’ this belief is true? Of
course not, and this is why, for example, we ought not to rely on what
we see in our side mirror as we drive by and think about changing lane,
since we know that objects might be closer than they appear. This is also
why, as a philosopher, I know that both shafts are of equal length in
the Müller-Lyer figure, though I can feel that I am strongly disposed to
believe otherwise. But to really account for perception as we usually at
least subjectively experience it, that is to say as a genuine openness to a
world our thought cannot alter by itself, we need a way to distinguish
perceptual beliefs from other intentional states. According to Crane,
‘[t]his seems an obvious apparent difference between perception and
thought: what you can think about does not seem to be constrained, in
general, by the existence and characteristics of the objects of thought;
what you can perceive, however, does.’ (2013, p. 205) This constraint
is what givenness, as I have tried to describe it, is or provides. Under
its influence, we do not experience nor conceive perception as fallible
or deceitful, unless we have strong reasons to do so. Even in this latter
case (given the circumstances, it is very likely we are falling prey to an
illusion) our concerns about the veracity of what we perceive already
presupposes its claim to truth. Thus perception is fraught with beliefs, as
liable to further revision as they may be. To have a conscious experience
without therefore being under the impression that what appears before
one’s mind is actually the case is not what it is to have a perpetual expe-
rience. And this epistemic character may well be rooted in the phenom-
enology of perception rather than its content. So, through its specific
givenness, there is indeed something in what is provided or conveyed to
us by our perceptual experience that at least slightly opens the door and
warrants our first step into the logical space of reasons, ‘of justifying and
being able to justify what one says.’ (Sellars, 2000, p. 248)

Notes
1. His 1910 Harvard Ph.D. dissertation addressed ‘The Place of Intuition in
Knowledge’. On the relation between Lewis and Kant, see Gowans (1989).
2. A surprisingly large amount of works were devoted to the issue of the given in
the first half of the 20th century, most of it being published in The Journal of
Philosophy.
3. See the influential work of John McDowell (1994).
4. Russell (1912, p. 10).
5. On the phenomenal character of perceptual presence, see Crane (2014, section
2.1.2).
 Perception and Its Givenness 175

6. In this respect, I do not agree with Crane (2014, section 3.3.1). The Müller-
Lyer case illustrates the fact that ‘one can have a perceptual illusion that
things are a certain way even when one knows they are not’. But if, as
Crane maintains, ‘in the situation as described, one does not believe, in any
sense, that the lines are different lengths’, where does our feeling of cogni-
tive perplexity or dissonance come from? Looking at the two shafts, we see
them as of a different length and are at least disposed to believe that they
are so. Admittedly, it would not be accurate to say that we are entertaining
explicitly contradictory beliefs here. However, we are experiencing at least
a cognitive conflict, due to a clear discrepancy between what we believe or
know (conceive as true), and what we are disposed to believe given what we
perceive. We might conclude that we do not perceive what we think we ought
to perceive, given the truth as we know it. But the illusion is persistent and
obviously weighs on our beliefs system, or at least on the set of our reasons
to believe. On the persistence of illusion and its epistemological significance,
see Fodor (1984/1990).
7. See Crane (2006, pp. 141ff.) on the awareness of one’s own experiential qual-
ities versus the idea of the transparency of experience.
8. Sellars insists that his target in Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind (first
edition 1956) is the ‘entire framework of givenness’ (2000, p. 205), of which
sense data are just one item.
9. On this point, Price and Lewis disagree: whereas Price accepts the possibility
of non-conceptual knowledge (knowledge by acquaintance), Lewis (1956,
p. 37) states firmly that there is no knowledge merely by direct awareness.
For him the given-in-itself is not cognitive.
10. ‘While we can thus isolate the element of the given by these criteria of its
inalterability and its character as sensuous feel or quality, we cannot describe
any particular given as such, because in describing it, in whatever fashion, we
qualify it by bringing it under some category or other, select from it, empha-
size aspects of it, and relate it in particular and avoidable ways. […] So that in
a sense the given is ineffable, always.’ (Lewis, 1956, pp. 52f.)
11. ‘In intellectual analysis, I do not do anything to the object before me. I find
relations within it. I discover that it possesses various characteristics – say
redness and roundness – and I apprehend certain differences between those
characteristics. But those relations and characteristics were there before I
discovered them. The only change that has occurred is a change in myself. I
was ignorant, and now, I know.’ (Price, 1950, p. 15) In other words, if there
are real effects that the activity of mind may induce, they occur on the side
of the knower, rather than on the side of the object known. Accordingly, the
given-in-itself, though it is reached only by the means of abstraction, can
genuinely be an object of knowledge and description. McDowell’s argument
that the given is available to conceptual articulation, though not necessarily
always conceptualized, is likely a much more elaborated way of advocating
such a view, without falling prey to a thoroughly empirical theory of concepts,
as the one Price was advocating. His attempt seems clearly to restore percep-
tion’s transparency, which is threatened by the Kantian distinction between
passivity and spontaneity in the subject. Empirical experience is a genuine
openness to the world, because even though perception leads to intuitions,
176 Aude Bandini

in McDowell sense intuitions are not something alien to judgment: both are
conceptually articulated. See McDowell (2009).
12. I am indebted to Jérôme Dokic (2012, p. 490) for drawing my attention to
this interesting footnote from Pryor.
13. Not to mention Husserl, but a reflection on Husserl’s influence on the philos-
ophy of perception in analytical philosophy far exceeds the scope of this
chapter.
14. The case of touch might be an exception in this regard, at least in the experi-
ence of kinetic resistance. Still, givenness is clearly distinct from, say, softness
or warmth.
15. This is very close to some of Alva Noë’s views on perceptual presence. For
example, see Noë (2012).
16. Epistemic efficaciousness and epistemic independence are not Sellars’ own
terms. This useful terminological distinction was introduced in the literature
on Sellars by deVries and Triplett (2000) in their particularly valuable study
guide of Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind.
17. Note that, to some extent, Sellars himself resorts to a qualified version of
externalism and naturalism in order to account for the process of conceptual
change, especially with his view of truth-picturing. On the subtle articulation
of normativism and naturalism in Sellars, see O’Shea (2007, pp. 143–90).

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