In the first of his two posts on "Gricean observation theory laden", McEvoy
refers to the phrase
'sensory input'.
as used by Grice in "Method in philosophical psychology", and indeed brings
some criticism to the expression.
I should point out that one may see Grice's programme in philosophical
psychology as being approachable from a first-person perspective (he was, after
all, an 'intentionalist') and from a third-person perspective.
It is in the third-person perspective that he refers to something like
'input' and 'output' where any psychological predicate becomes a 'theoretical
term' in some folksy psychological theory.
Before considering McEvoy's criticism, I should present Grice's detailed
third-person perspective. He applies it not a Homo sapiens, but to something
like a squirrel, that he calls a squarrel.
In one of his unpublications, as he prepared for the William James lectures
he wrote:
"need to postulate creature to which ascription of 'goal' makes sense".
It will take him 10 more years to come up with the idea of a squarrel:
Toby.
Toby, after all _wants_ nuts:
1. Toby, the squarrel, has nuts in front of him.
-- This is a third-person utterance. It's Grice who sees the squarrel in
his (Grice's) backyard.
2. The squarrel is short on squirrel-food (observed or assumed).
-- Here Grice does use 'observe' -- and we may assume, from a third-person
perspective, that this squarrel is hungry, since squarrels are usually
hungry.
3. The squarrel wants (wills, wishes, desires) squirrel-food (By
Psychological Postulate, connecting 'wish' with intake of nuts)
-- This is the first usage of a theoretical term (in something like
Ramsey's use of 'theoretical' as per his "Ramsey sentence").
4. The squarrel prehends nuts as in front (From (1) by Psychological
Postulate, if it is assumed that 'nuts' and 'in front' are familiar to the
squarrel)
-- Here Grice's assumptions make it clear that, while assuming a
third-person perspective, he is careful to take into consideration the
squarrel's
first-person perspective: 'nut' and 'to be in front of' must be "concepts"
held by the squarrel
5. The squarrel joins squirrel-food with gobbling and nuts and in front
(The squirrel judges gobbling, on nuts, in front, for squarrel-food) (by
Psychological Postulate, with the aid of prior observation).
-- Here Grice is postulating, with 'judging', something like 'believing'
(cfr. Kant on 'judgement').
So by Psychological Law, from 3, 4, and 5, Grice concludes:
________________________________________________
Ergo:
6. The squarrel gobbles, and since nuts _are_ in front of him, gobbles the
nuts in front of him.
So, for Grice, this third-person perspective is like an inferential game.
So 'sensorial input', if required, has to be formulated in terms that make
sense for the creature in question. The third-person perspective must
include some first-person perspective, as it were.
Now for McEvoy's criticism:
"There is potential confusion in this, even aside from its (mistaken)
behaviourist tendencies. We can speak of understanding experience in terms of
'inputs' and their affects/effects on our sensory apparatus. But we invite
confusion and error if
we call this 'input' "sensory input"."
Point taken. I suppose that by distinguishing a third-person perspective
that respects the first-person perspective of the creature to which the input
is input we may minimise some of that confusion or error.
McEvoy:
"We need to clearly distinguish the 'input' as an entity independent of
its being sensed [e.g. a light wave or sound wave]"
-- or a nut, as in the example above.
"and our sense of any such 'inputs'. The entities independent of their
being sensed are not "sensory" (and belong to W1) and it is misleading to
refer to them as "sensory inputs", when they are non-sensory inputs. But
affects/effects of these inputs on our sensory apparatus are not "inputs" any
more (and belong to W2), and it is misleading to call them "sensory inputs"."
I would think that Grice needs to assume that predicates like '... sees
...' (e.g. the squarrel sees nuts in front of it) are pre-psychological. They
may not involve belief or desire. Any student of psychology indeed starts
with perception (as any manual of psychology will show) but usually we don't
call someone a full-blown (figuratively) psychologist, if he's only into
'seeing'. The study of the 'senses' has to do more with 'physiology' -- It's
the field of a physiologist, rather?
McEvoy:
"The term "sensory input" borders on oxymoron. Now the key point: when a
light or sound wave [as 'input'] has an effect/affect on our sensory
apparatus, is that effect/affect independent of the processing of the sensory
apparatus? In traditional empiricism, the assumption is 'yes' - somehow the
'input' strikes our sensory apparatus as 'sense data', where its content is
given independent of apparatus detecting it. This is a fundamental
mistake. In the case of light and sound waves, it is clear that we do not
perceive them ever as 'sense data' (where their content would be 'given'
independent of the capacities of our sensory apparatus): our sensory
apparatus can only extract from a range within the wave-input and never
extracts
without processing. There are no unprocessed experiences or 'elements of
experience': which is to say, there are no sense-data."
Well, sense data for dogs differ from sense data for Homo sapiens; sense
data for cats differ from sense data for Homo sapiens. Note that Grice takes
into consideration the assumption that the squarrel sees or perceives or
observes the nuts in front of him. The nut (qua thing in the world) is the
input to the squarrel's eye, and the squarrel forms an image of that
squarrel. This is physiology. It becomes psychology when we ascribe to the
squarrel
the goal, the belief and the desire "I want to eat that nut".
Or something like that.
Cheers,
Speranza
