Abstract

The essay examines H. P. Grice's attempt to formulate the necessary and sufficient conditions of perceiving in purely causal terms. It involves appraisal of P. F. Strawson's criticism of the thesis as inherently circular; George Pitcher's defence of it against Strawson's challenge; Alvin I. Goldman's Historical Reliabilism, a causal-cum-belief theory of knowledge which had started off as a strictly Gricean analysis; and, finally, Donald Davidson's theory of the explanation of action which construes reasons as causes and, hence, explanation by reasons as only a species of ordinary causal explanation. ;According to our finding, Grice's thesis is indeed vulnerable to Strawson's objection; Pitcher fails to deflect the force of Strawson's attack, his own composite account of perception fails to improve the prospects of Grice's doctrine; and its merits notwithstanding, Strawson's critique lacks the wherewithal to make it a decisive argument against the causal program. Our argument thence: the necessary and sufficient conditions of perception cannot be provided in causal terms; an adequate account has to be non-causal or, at least, include factors which are demonstrably refractory to causal analysis . ;The study does not pretend to offer a comprehensive theory, however, specifying the necessary and sufficient conditions of perception in non-causal terms; it merely sketches the kind of lines necessary for doing this if this were viable. The results are fruitful, nonetheless: for, along with its central task of settling a heretofore unresolved dispute in perception theory proper , the study affords a sense of the interconnections among seemingly disparate issues, illuminating some age-old puzzles in philosophical debate; notable among these being, of course, the two-fold flaw disclosed in the causalist's program , namely, its weak grasp of the intensional complexity of the concepts in question and, thence, its taking the general concession that causal factors are relevant, to somehow lead to the conclusion--without sufficient argument--that a causal theory of those concepts is adequate