Introduction

In his article, "The Given Element in Experience," C.I. Lewis divides experience into two elements: the "Given," which is what is independent of the mind and presented to it, and our mind's interpretation of the "Given." In order to have an experience, both elements must be present. In what follows, I will try to address some questions that may arise from the reading.

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Two Elements of Experience: The "Given" and Interpretation

Lewis does not really offer a robust argument for dividing experience into two components. Rather, he takes it as a “given” that everyone divides experience up in this way, a fact that is “one of the oldest and most universal of philosophic insights” (187). Of course, he thinks that philosophers disagree about what these components are, but that they exist he takes to be obvious.

However, he does offer a few small “hints” as to why he takes experience to be this way. If we denied this division, Lewis thinks we would be “betraying” our own experience. If there is nothing (“given”) that is presented to the mind, then our knowledge would not relate to anything external to our own minds. But if this were the case, our knowledge would be arbitrary. Furthermore, if there is no “interpretation” of the “given” by our minds, then our thought would be useless (for all we would need is the data for knowledge), the possibility of error becomes mysterious (because it seems reasonable to assume that errors will only arise in our interpretation of the “given”), and Lewis claims that the distinction between true and false would be in danger of becoming meaningless (I guess because the distinction should rest on something independent of the mind). Thus, Lewis believes that we can “take it for granted” that experience must have these two elements.

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The A Priori & A Posteriori Distinction

As we saw before, Lewis believes that we can divide experience into two separate components. Lewis opens his article by stating:

Philosophy is the study of the a priori. It seeks to reveal those categorial criteria which the mind applies to what is given to it. (186)

In order to understand how the a priori_--_a posteriori distinction figures in Lewis’ distinction between the two elements of experience, we’re going to have to do a bit of work. I struggled with this passage for a while. But, I think I have it (always a dangerous assumption). Lewis seems to suggest two different readings:

1. On one reading, Lewis seems to be saying that the a priori is identical with the interpretation/construction of the mind and that the a posteriori is identical with experience. If we look at the quote above, we can see how this reading gets going: he tells us that philosophy studies the a priori and then elaborates this point by saying that philosophy studies the “criteria which the mind applies to what is given it.” Thus, he seems to be drawing an identity relationship between the a priori and the workings of the mind. However, one reason to doubt this reading is that Lewis directly tells us that these two distinctions are merely “correlative” distinctions, suggesting that there is no identity relationship. Secondly, it seems clear that, given that the a posteriori is a form of knowledge, it must involve the mind in some way. This fact seems to demand that, whatever the a posteriori is, it cannot be identical with the “given.”

1. On a different reading of Lewis, and the reading that I believe is correct, we should understand the relationship quite differently. I’ll try to explain my position. Both the a priori and the a posteriori are forms of knowledge—they both involve the mind. However, they differ in their subject matter. A priori knowledge is “explicative of concepts”; that is, it takes the concepts of the mind as its subject matter (186). A posteriori knowledge, on the other hand, takes “the given” as its subject matter. Such knowledge arises from the “interpretation of the given” (186). Now we can see how the distinction between a priori and a posteriori knowledge plays a role in Lewis’s theory. Experience, as we have seen, is divided into two elements: the “given” and the mind’s “interpretation” of the given (through the use of concepts). A posterior knowledge is knowledge that arises from the interpretation of the “given.” A priori knowledge is definitive knowledge of the way our minds “interpret” the given.

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Moore vs. Lewis: Sense Data vs. the "Given"

Lewis’s “given” and Moore’s “sense data” differ in a number of important ways. For one, Lewis does not believe that the “given” can be accepted as an “epistemological category” (189). According to a theory of sense data, we do not “see” objects in the world. Rather, something (often the world) “causes” us to experience sense-data, and it is these sense-data that we experience. Moore uses the example of a hand. He argues that we do not see the hand. Instead, we see a “sense datum,” a part of the surface of a hand, yet through some mental acrobatics, we come to see our “sense data” as a representation of a hand. According to Lewis’s account, this is wrong: it is wrong to think that there is some “preanalytic given” that is somehow before experience. For Lewis, the “given” is in experience and cannot be neatly cleaved from our mental interpretation.

Another difference between their theories is that Lewis does not believe one can divide “sense data” into the five senses. For Lewis, all that exists is a type of “brute-fact” experience that does not divide nicely into five categories (190). It is something like a “stream of consciousness.” It lacks division into senses and it also lacks temporal qualities, for the instance we begin to separate our stream of consciousness into divisible chunks, we are already beginning to interpret the “given.” This renders the “given” rather ineffable, and Moore’s sense-data (while he has trouble fastening on what they are) are not so hard to get a hold of—-at least, in principle.

I’m not sure that this is correct, but I think that a nice way of putting it is this. For Lewis, the act of seeing is an act of mental interpretation of the “given.” We do not see the “given.” Rather, what we see is our minds’ interpretation of the “given,” broken up into objects, time slices, senses, etc. For Moore, on the other hand, we do not see our mental interpretations. Seeing appears to be prior to analysis—we see sense data. That is, I see part of the surface of my hand; it is my mind that goes on to recognize it as a representation of my hand.

-- DanielS - 24 Oct 2005