Goldman on the Non-contingency Thesis

Abstract

Alan H. Goldman' purports to refute the position taken by D. W. Hamlyin that 'Normally we see things as they are' is a non-contingent truth (the NCT thesis, for short). He has, however, missed the point of the NCT thesis, as I understand it.2 I shall try to show why, and argue that the NCT thesis is in fact correct. Goldman's description of and arguments against the NCT thesis are couched in exactly the terminology, and presuppose precisely the conceptual framework, that the NCT thesis rejects. Classical Empiricism has bestowed upon subsequent epistemology the assumption that our knowledge of, for example, the colours of things must be justified in a certain way against a certain kind of scepticism. There are, allegedly, two clearly separate items-the (internal? private?) way that things appear to us, and the (external? public?) way things really are. A claim about the way things really are, if epistemological scepticism is to be refuted, must be shown to be validly derivable always and only from claims about the way things appear. So there might in principle be no correlation at all between the way things appear and the way things are-we might, for example, be consistently deceived about this by a malignant demon. By contrast, the NCT thesis indeed claims that, except for well-defined circumstances, this possibility is a philosophical delusion. Goldman, however, takes it that the NCT thesis essentially accepts the abovedescribed framework, and differs from its opponents only in denying that this possibility follows from that framework. This misrepresents the strategy. Again, Goldman is correct in supposing that Wittgenstein's notion of a criterion influences, even motivates, the NCT thesis. But he supposes that the notion of a criterion functions simply to combat the thought that this problematic possibility follows from the supposedly common framework. This too is a misrepresentation, although not an uncommon one.3 To show Goldman does picture the NCT thesis as accepting the traditional framework, let me cite the following typical passage: