ARGUMENTS (2) 277second steps of the brief three-step arguments sketched early in this chapter.
These principles can be expressed as follows:
(P*) If a person S has an experience E which, if reliable, is a matter
of being aware of an experience-independently existing item X,
and E is not canceled or counterbalanced or compromised or
contradicted or confuted or logically consumed or empirically
consumed, then S’s having E is evidence that X exists.
and
(P**) If a person S has an experience E which, if reliable, is a matter
of being aware of an experience-independently existing item X,
and S (non-culpably) has no reason to think that E is canceled
or counterbalanced or compromised or contradicted or
confuted or logically consumed or empirically consumed, then
S’s having E provides S evidence that X exists.
Some experiences, we have noted, are matters of someone’s at least seeming
to perceive something which, if it exists at all, exists independent of its being
experienced. These have a particular structure – subject/ consciousness/
object. Other experiences are matters of someone’s feeling a certain way.
These also have a particular structure – subject/content. Seeing an apple tree
is of the former sort; so is merely seeming to see an apple tree. Feeling
nauseous or dizzy, and experiencing generalized anxiety or euphoria, are
examples of the latter sort. It is important to keep in mind the differences
between experiences that are subject/ consciousness/object in structure and
experiences that are subject/ content in structure.
Subject/content experience and a principle of experiential
evidence
Treating subject/content experience as evidence requires, implicitly if not
explicitly, a principle of experiential evidence different from (P*) and (P**)
which refer to evidence for the existence of experience-independent things
and apply to subject/consciousness/object experiences. Where we allow being
in a state to be broadly construed (so as to cover things like having a quality,
being an event, and the like), consider:
(P***) If a person S has an experience E which, if reliable, is a matter
of S being aware of an experience-dependently existing