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Introduction
This book was originally conceived as a series of loosely connected studies addressing topics, both central and peripheral, in contemporary epistemology. What gradually became clear in the writing of it, however, was that in the course of examining various episten10logical questions I inevitably found myself at the same time taking a stand on many of those questions, and-as the publisher's anonymous referees of the draft manuscript both insistedthis collection of stands taken constitutes at least the rudiments of a coherent and fairly comprehensive positive philosophical theory of knowledge. And both anonymous referees also suggested that I should stop being so coy about it and tell the reader straight out what that theory is. The point is well taken, and these introductory remarks are consequently intended to give a brief synoptic overview, first, of the central theses of that theory and, then, of the course of reflections by which I undertake both to develop and to defend them. As is always the case with introductory remarks, what is really in1portant, namely the detailed arguments, will be missing. In the balance of this introduction, then, epistemological doctrines will be mentioned, assorted names will be dropped, and various theses will be claimed to be effectively criticizable or defensible-all very dry and unsatisfying. The full text here summarily described, however, where the promised critiques and defences are actually offered, will, I hope, prove to be both less dry and more satisfying, and perhaps (although I recognize that this is highly unlikely) even convincing.
The positive theory The leading thesis developed in this book, to formulate it most dramatically, is that knowledge is simply adequately justified belief. To put it less dramatically but more accurately, we correctly judge that S knows that p whenever, from our de facto epistemic perspective, we judge S able adequately to justify
Introduction
his belief that p. Since from anyone epistemic perspective the judgements that S has done everything requisite to be entitled confidently to believe that p and that S has done everything requisite to establish the truth of p stand or fall together, a further "truth requirement" is vacuous and idle. Truth may arguably be an outcome of enquiry, but it can function neither as enquiry's goal nor as a constraining condition on any defacto epistemic policy or procedure. This book thus both implicitly and explicitly calls into question in a fundamental way many received understandings regarding the relationships among the concepts of knowledge, justification, and truth. The "perspectivalist" view here advocated, whose origins lie in Peircean pragmatism, is predicated upon explicit recognition of our inescapable epistemic situatedness. Unqualified attributions of knowledge are always made only from our own epistemic perspective, with reference to a particular context of enquiry, and enquiry itself is correlatively understood as always addressed to determinate questions, properly raised only within the framework of a set of background beliefs, themselves not then and there in question, which render appropriate the application of particular investigative procedures, techniques, and norms of epistemic conduct. The corresponding conception of justification is consequently proceduralist, holding that, in the first instance, it is conducts ofpersons that are justified or unjustified. A person's belief is justified, therefore, only if she is justified in believing it, and that will be so just to the extent that she is in a position to justify her believing it, an internalist consequence which I argue applies equally to inferentially derived theoretical and "immediate" spontaneous perceptual beliefs. The Cartesian theses that matter-of-factual knowledge both needs and has available incorrigible foundations are thus rejected in favour of a resolute anti-scepticism coupled to a thoroughgoingfallibilism. Those, then, in short compass, are the chief claims and contentions advanced and defended in the course of this book. Thus sensitized, an attentive reader should be able to detect most of them at work throughout the book, but with various degrees of implicitness. As explicitly formulated t~e ses, however, they surface at different times and in a different order. The reason is that, as is my unrepentant custom, I undertake to develop and expound my own philosophical views dialectically, through a careful critical confrontation with and among alternative views and the arguments offered by their advocates. As one of the publisher's referees remarked, the result is not an easy read: "A typical chapter begins by launching the reader into some detailed arguments, with little initial sense of the shape of the chapter as a whole, and relying upon the reader's understanding of the problems that 2
Introd uction
concern him and the assllmptions on which he relies." ("For those equipped to hang 011," he charitably added, "it can be an exhilarating ride" .) The point is again well taken, and I have made some effort, probably inadequate, to address it in the present version. Some additional help, however, may also be provided by the following:
Outline of the chapters As did contemporary epistenl010gy itself, I begin with Rene Descartes. Descartes is often said to have presented, in his first Meditation, a compelling intuitive argu.ment for scepticism regarding our knowledge of the natural world of causally interacting objects in space and time; that is, an argument in support of the claim that it is possible to doubt that any such world exists. Chapter 1 opens with an assessment of this imputation. I argue that a close reading of the original text fails to support the received view. Even when granted a variety of charitable exegetical concessions, Descartes' reasoning turns out to rest upon a series of problematic and highly conte11tious presuppositions quite sufficient to vitiate its claim to be either intuitive or compelling. In the balance of the chapter, I argue that the same holds true for a variety of sceptical reasonings in the general Cartesian style; that is, arguments which appeal to "closure principles" and to our supposed inability to rule out sceptical counter possibilities incompatible with either the truth of or our knowledge of what is supposedly known. The central constructive aim of the chapter, then, is to underscore and support the positive theory's steadfast anti-scepticism; in particular, the thesis that knowledge cannot be undermined by mere possibilities, but only by possibilities which there is some positive reason to suppose actually obtain. Complementary to this resolute anti-scepticism is a thoroughgoingjallibilism with respect to matter-of-factual convictions, which is the central constructive theme of Chapter 2. More specifically, the chapter is addressed to the notion of certainty which Descartes' own epistemological picture sets in opposition to such ostensible global fallibilism. In particular, I consider and find wanting the characteristically Cartesian contention that there is a unique mental operation-a species of epoche, paradigmatically illustrated by the cogitowhich not only suspends judgement and retreats from any "thick" claim to objective truth, but also yields a "thin" truth-claim regarding subjective matters with respect to which we are epistemically infallible. There is, in short, supposed to be an essential connection between certainty and subjectivity. 3
Introduction
The relevant conception of subjectivity turns out to be more difficult to locate than one would initially suspect. The search takes me, inter alia, into the difficult territory of Kant's distinction between "original apperception" and "inner sense", for which I attempt to provide some suitable exegetical enlightenment. My overall conclusion is that neither the deliberate suspension of objective commitments in an act of epoche nor the modes of causal self-affection that Kant thematized under the rubric "inner sense" issues in a class of incorrigible Cartesian certainties. A pure epoche wou.1d yield something that is in a trivial and vacuous sense "infallible"-where no truth-claim is made, no error is possible-but which, for just that reason, is not a truthsusceptible judgement at all, subjective or otherwise. An exercise of "inner sense" indeed issues in a judgement regarding something properly deemed subjective-e.g. a report of the occurrence of a perceptual experience-but it does not exclude the possibility of error. The illusion of subjective certainties results from the fact that an ordinary claim of perceptual appearing-a 'looks'-, 'sounds'-, 'feels'-, 'smells'-, 'tastes'-, and so, generically, 'seems'judgement-combines a trivially "infallible" objective epoche with such an error-susceptible subjective report. Such judgements of perceptual appearing have traditionally been cast in ostensibly foundational epistemic roles. Struck by the large number of falsehoods that he had accepted in his youth and by the highly doubtful nature of the "edifice" that he had subsequently based on them, Descartes proposed "to demolish everything completely and start again right from the foundations". Correlatively, he regarded his method of doubt and the incorrigibly certain beliefs to which its successful application was to lead as two moments in the process of securing such epistemic foundations, upon which he could then"establish [something] in the sciences that was stable and likely to last" . Chapter 3 engages with the question of whether we can expect to find such "foundational" beliefs, beliefs which would constitute "direct" or "immedi.., ate" independent knowledge of a family of facts capable of serving as the ultimate court of epistemic appeal for all factual claims about the world, both particular and general. My particular stalking-horse in Chapter 3 is consequently the confrontation between Wilfrid Sellars' well-known critique of the "Myth of the Given" and, to begin with, William Alston's notion of "immediate knowledge". The latter, however, is ab initio ambiguous between the notions of knowledge that is underived, i.e. non-inferential or spontaneous knowledge, and knowledge that is epistemically independent, i.e. knowledge that does not depend for its epistemic status on other knowledge. Sellars finds no fault with the conclusion that 4
Introduction
some knowledge must be immediate in the former sense-not all knowledge can be derived from other knowledge-but argues that the idea of knowledge that is immediate in the second sense rests on blurring the distinction between non-propositional causes and propositional contents. The only normative paradigm of a belief being "based on" particular "grounds" is the paradigm of inferential support; where the ostensible "grounds" do not have the logical shape of a proposition, a belief can be "based on" them only in the sense of being a response to them. Sellars' rejection of epistemically independent knowledge is thus reflected in a strong epistemic internalism, according to which one's non-inferential (e.g. perceptual) belief counts as knowledge only if one knows that its spontaneous occurrence is, in normal circumstances, a reliable indicator of the fact believed. Since the positive theory of knowledge here advocated in fact endorses such a comprehensive strong internalism, a goodly portion of Chapter 3 is dedicated to exploring the integrated normative account of epistemic justification, language-mastery, concept-possession, and perceptual experience which gives rise to and supports those internalist convictions. Central to that account, and also to the theory of knowledge developed here, is an epistemicproceduralism, according to which the activity of justifying is prior in the order of understanding to the state of beingjustified, which consequently, whether predicated of beliefs or of believers, must be elucidated in terms of the notion of actual and potential justificatory practices. The chapter closes with an argument for the dialectical instability of "concept externalism" , the thesis, articulated by Franz von Kutschera and defended by Crispin Sartwell, that the notion of justificatory reasoning has no essential role to play in an account of the concept of knowledge; that is, that what is essential to knowledge is only true belief. The critical argument highlights the crucial internalist interplay between objective warrant and subjective confidence: A responsible and reflective epistemic agent proportions the strength of his subjective convictions to his objective epistemic entitlements. What secure those entitlements are the justificatory arguments available to him. It follows that spontaneous thoughts and judgements that are "immediate" or "foundational", in the sense of being in fact underived or non-inferential, nevertheless owe their normative epistemic character as expressions of knowledge to their potential embedding in justificatory reasoning practices. The notion of justification having assumed its traditional place of prominence, Chapter 4 turns to the classical "justified-true-belief" account of knowledge. Here is where the positive theory's perspectivalism comes explicitly and articulately into view. The centrepiece of the chapter is a critical 5
Introduction
exploration of Robert Fogelin's reinterpretation of the classical account in terms of a conjunction of two readings of the traditional justification clause, one "internalist" and "deontological", according to which it endorses the propriety of a subject's actual epistemic conduct, and one "externalist" and "evaluative", according to which it asserts the adequacy of the subject's de facto grounds to establish the truth of what is believed. Fogelin's analysis yields an insightful diagnosis of the challenge offered by familiar "Gettier problems" as essentially resting on a contrast of informational states. What is crucial to a Gettier scenario is that someone, given the information ex hypothesi available to him, has responsibly come to believe some claim to be true on grounds that we, who are stipulated to be privy to additional information, recognize do not establish its truth. I offer a revision of Fogelin's diagnosis which replaces his contrast between assessments of epistemic propriety and assessments of truth-determinativeness with one between two wholly "deontological" assessments of propriety from distinct epistemicperspectives. In the balance of the chapter, the resulting "perspectivalist" account is distinguished from such widespread "contextualist" views as that advocated by Keith DeRose, and then deployed critically against both Fogelin's own "Pyrrhonian" sceptical conclusions and the more moderate "elusiveness" and "instability" theses defended by David Lewis and Michael Williams, according to which epistemological enquiry per se generates a unique epistemic context within which matter of factual knowledge becomes impossible. Chapter 5 offers an (admittedly somewhat revisionist) "internalist-perspectivalist" interpretation, based on the positive conclusions developed and defended in preceding chapters, of G. E. Moore's epistemological views and arguments. In particular, I challenge Barry Stroud's diagnostic interpretations of Moore's anti-sceptical strategies and defend Moore's arguments against Stroud's well-known criticisms. The central constructive achievement of the chapter is a more detailed working-out of the perspectivalistpragmatist conception of enquiry as necessarily addressed to determinate questions and conducted within a setting of (defeasible) agreements regarding pertinent investigative methods, applicable epistemic norms, and matters of fact not then and there in question. In this context, the point of Moore's "defence of common sense" is to call our attention to the vast collection of matter-of-factual propositions that, in Wittgenstein's words, "we affirm without special testing"; propositions which supply the normative epistemic standard for closing off a sceptical dialogue of challenge and response with the observation that it is more reasonable to consent to a disputed conclusion than 6
Introduction
to pursue the further enquiries suggested by the latest challenges-an initial non-inferential, non-derivative epistemic authority that is also shared by the crucial premise of Moore's "proof of an external world", 'Here is one hand, and here is another' . Finally, Chapter 6 is devoted to the explicit exploration of the relationships between the notion of truth and such central episten1ic concepts as objectivity, justification, and, of course, knowledge. It begins by revisiting the "concept-externalist" thesis that what is essential to knowledge is only true belief, here freshly defended (by Ansgar Beckermann) as the only acceptable answer to the first question properly addressed by any systematic epistemological theory, "What is the goal of our cognitive efforts?" Appeals to reliable beliefforming mechanisms or to justificatory reasoning, in contrast, are best understood as addressed to subsidiary questions: "How can we reach that goal?" and "How can we ascertain whether and to what extent we have reached it?" On this view, the traditional "justified-true-belief" account of knowledge confusedly conjoins the answers to these distinct questions. Truth is the goal of enquiry; justification only a means or a criterion. In contrast, I argue that, despite almost universal agreement to the contrary, objective matter-of-factual truth simply cannot be the goal of our epistemic activities. Since nothing could count as a reason to conclude that we had finally arrived at such truths and thereby realized our putative goal, believing such truths cannot function in our practical reasoning as a goal. That is, there is no way to transform an ostensible commitment to the goal of objective truth into concrete epistemic policies and practices. This negative conclusion is characteristically pragmatist and, indeed, has already been drawn by C. S. Peirce, although his own "ideal-limit" epistemic conception of truth as "the opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate" fares no better on this front. Peirce's own positive suggestion is that enquiry aims at "the settlement of opinion" orfixedbelief, and while this proposal also clearly admits of various unsatisfactory interpretations, I offer one that both is arguably defensible and harmonizes reasonably well with the internalist-perspectivalist account of knowledge developed in earlier chapters. Correlatively, I suggest that Peirce's appeal to the method of science as the fundamental means of fixing belief-parsed "abductively" as in the first instance concerned with the explanatory accommodation of those perceptual experiences which we in fact find ourselves having-can fruitfully be understood as advancing a practice-based constitutive analysis of objectivity as such. For, the epistemic marks of objective matter-of-factual truth are fallibility and 7
Introduction
intersubjectivity. The former is guaranteed, on Peirce's account, by the essential open-endedness of scientific enquiry; the latter by the impersonality and repeatability of scientific observations and experiments. Peirce thus offers us the rudiments of a systematic epistemological theory significantly different from the received. tradition; a theory that explicitly acknowledges our inescapable epistemic situatedness, and so consistently remains both procedural and perspectival in a way that, as Peirce himself insists, precludes the possibility of global sceptical doubt in the Cartesian tradition. None of the theses that I defend in these six chapters is dramatically new, althop.gh some of the arguments are perhaps innovative, and some of the exegetical moves are, let us say, bold. Readers familiar with my previous philosophical work, however (if indeed there are any), will find little to surprise them. Like much of that work, the epistemological views developed here con1bine Kantian and Peircean insights in characteristically Sellarsian ways. I remain, that is, true to my philosophical heritage. This time around, those trusted and familiar conceptual and historical resources have provided me with useful tools both for critically engaging a nu.mber of contemporary epistemological positions and for argumentatively defending a relatively systematic constructive alternative. That their insights, in this way, continue to hold up as well as they have and do is the best reason I know of for concluding that Kant and Peirce and Sellars were generally very much on the right track.
8
The Myth of Cartesian Scepticism: Dreaming, Doubts, and Epistemic Closure
1
Doubt is a kind offear . .. and 'tis the same kind of Madness for a Man to doubt of anything, as to hopefor orfear it, upon a mere possibility John Wilkins 1
Scepticism is said in many ways. Its characteristic classical mark, however, is doubt, and so traditional divisions typically classify sceptics according to what they profess to doubt. Ontological sceptics, for instance, profess to doubt that items of one sort or another exist; epistemological sceptics that we blOW this or that to be the case; for example, that items of one sort or another exist. When talk is of Cartesian scepticism-so called because Descartes is usually thought to have given, in his first Meditation, an intuitive and compelling argument in support of its possibility-the items in question are the contents of a natural world; typically, a system of discrete interacting spatio-temporal objects. In particular, what Descartes is supposed to have shown is that it is possible to doubt that (we know that) any such natural world exists. Cartesian scepticism, that is, is a matter of global existential doubt regarding objects in space and time. The central question that animates this chapter is whether Descartes' putative demonstration of the possibility of such scepticism is as intuitive and compelling as it is custonlarily taken to be. Descartes himself, of course, was neither an ontological nor an epistemological Cartesian sceptic. He doubted neither that the natural world existed 1 Of the Principles andDuties ofNatural Religion, 7thedn. (London: R. Bonwicke, 1675), pp. 25-6. Cited by Christopher Hookway in Scepticism (London and New York: Routledge, 1990), p. 39.
Cartesian Scepticism
nor that we can know not only that the natural world exists but also a good deal about its particular contents and characteristics. Descartes' appeal to the notion of doubt was explicitly methodological, and what was methodologically relevant was never anyone's de facto doubts, but always the possibility of doubting this or that proposition, since that possibility was sufficient to exclude the proposition in question from a particular class of propositions that Descartes is concerned to locate and identify in the opening stages of his Meditations. 2 The opening remark of the Meditations adverts to the propositions at issue. They are what he here refers to as "the foundations": Some years ago I was struck by the large number of falsehoods that I had accepted as true in my childhood, and by the highly doubtful nature of the whole edifice that I had subsequently based on them. I realized that it was necessary, once in the course of my life, to demolish everything completely and start again right from the foundations if I wanted to establish anything at all in the sciences that was stable and likely to last. (AT 17 = CS 12)3
What we should particularly notice about this remark is Descartes' unquestioned confidence not only that the collection of propositions that he accepts or believes-of his opinions, as he usually puts it-has an implicit structure, but that it is a hierarchical structure. That the collection of one's opinions necessarily has some structure or other is not controversial. Propositions, after all, are precisely the sort of items that can and do stand in logical and evidential relationships, in virtue of which some of them can and do serve as reasons for others. But this much interrelatedness is compatible with a variety of structures. (The contemporary image of "the web of belief" comes to mind.) Descartes, however, evidently takes the correlative architectural metaphors of "grounds" 2 The use of 'propositions' here and subsequently is intended to be ontologically innocent and theoretically non-committal. I need a common noun to stand proxy for that-clauses, and 'proposition' will do as well as any. Propositions are thus what can be truly or falsely believed or disbelieved, since, typically, what one truly or falsely believes or disbelieves is that S, where' S' is replaced by some grammatical declarative sentence-but the reader is encouraged to refrain from drawing any provocative ontological or theoretical conclusions from such remarks. I shall also sometin1es say, for instance, that propositions are "expressed" by sentences and "given" by that-clauses, but these remarks, too, are lueant to be read innocently and non-committally. I deliberately avoid 'denoted' here, since I have learned that even charitable readers find it difficult to avoid thinking of denotation or reference as a relation implying ontological status for its relata. My book Beyond Formalism: Naming and Necessity jOr Human Beings (Philadelphia, Pa.: Temple University Press, 1994) offers a variety of contrary considerations which may help the charitable reader to resist that temptation. 3 From the translation of Meditations on First Philosophy by John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch in The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, ii (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984). Citations here marked "CS" will be from that version; those marked "AT" give the page numbers of the Adam and Tannery edition of the Latin text, given marginally by Cottingham et al.
10
Cartesian Scepticism
and "support" entirely literally. Some of his opinions are "based on" others, and the entire "edifice" admits of being "demolished" and cleared away to reveal its "foundations". Descartes' confidence here, I want to suggest, reflects his tacit acceptance of what we might call the formalist paradigm in epistemology, according to which, explicitly or implicitly, mathen1atical knowledge is treated as a model for knowledge in general. Thereby hangs a classical dialectic. Mathematical truths are traditiol1ally conceived of and characterized as universal, impersonal, a-perspectival, necessary, and apodictically certain. Fundamental to any understanding of our epistemic status vis-a-vis the natural order, however, is the fact that we are situated beings. That is, the natural world is epistemically available to us, if at all, only through perceptual takings, sensuous episodes of perceiving something as something which functionally embody aspects of demonstration and classification. The world that is sensorily present to us is always present only in perspective; that is, from a determinate spatio-temporal point of view. On the face of it, then, empirical knowledge would have to be fundamentally particular, personal, perspectival, contingent, and inden10nstrable. The formalist paradigm thus immediately generates a tension between the conviction that knowledge is fundamentally manifested in the exercise of our capacity to know "eternal" mathematical truths and the commonsensical idea that we are also able to come to know matter-of-factual truths about the natural order. The classical, Socratic-Platonic, response to this tension was to deny the very possibility of empirical knowledge. Allthentic knowledge (episteme) must be of reality, and what is real are the eternal and independent Forms, which cannot be sensed but only grasped by the intellect. ,The provenance of knowledge proper, then, is reason alone, and the very idea of authentic empirical, i.e. experiential, knowledge is intrinsically incoherent. Sensory experience informs us only about appearances, and so, with regard to the world available to us through the senses, the world of such appearances, we can aspire only to opinion (doxa). The emergence of modern science dramatically challenged this classical contrast between episteme and doxa by asserting the mathematical lawfulness of .the experienced world. Galileo and Kepler and later, most strikingly, Newton professed epistemic access to natural necessities; that is, to mathematically representable universal, impersonal, and a-perspectival truths about the natural order which are suited to be objects of knowledge properly so called. The epistemological task which Descartes sets himself at the outset of his Meditations is precisely to vindicate an entitlement to such scientific 11
Cartesian Scepticism knowledge of the sensorily encountered world, an epistemic entitlement to something "in the sciences ... stable and likely to last" . What may have suggested to Descartes that such a project made sense within the formalist framework was the stunning intellectual accomplishment represented by his analytic geometry; that is, the reduction of the classical "science of space" to a series of deductions within the algebraic "science of number" . Why should not something analogous be equally feasible for the emerging "science of nature"? At this point in the dialectic, in other words, a commitment to the formalist paradigm manifests itself in a presumptive demand for a regressive structure of justification terminating in "self-evident truths". Just as one's epistemic entitlement to a theorem of (analytic) geometry is secured by exhibiting it as the terminus of a chain of logical derivations originating in "self-evident" (algebraic) axioms and postulates, the "original foundations" of our empirical knowledge would similarly need to be ostensibly "self-disclosing" truths in which any such regressive justificatory reconstruction within a mathematical natural science would necessarily terminate. It is this dialectical demand of "reason" specifically in service of the formalist paradigm, I think, that persuades Descartes to adopt a methodological principle and an epistemic practice both of which, from any commonsensical or practical perspective, would be utterly unreasonable; namely: that I should hold back my assent from opinions which are not completely certain and indubitable just as carefully as I do from those which are patently false. So, for the purpose of rejecting all my opinions, it will be enough if I find in each of them at least some reason for doubt. (AT 18 = CS 12)
There's quite a bit going on in this short passage. Setting aside for a moment the question of just what counts as a "reason for doubt" in ordinary, practical contexts, we can nevertheless observe that when one is confronted with such an ordinary reason for doubting some mundane propositionp which one has hitherto accepted, the appropriate practical epistemic reaction is typically to modify one's degree of confidence in the truth of p. In the first instance, that is, 'doubt' adverts to a family of epistemic attitudes, correlative to and contrasting with certitude. To be in doubt is characteristically to be epistemically irresolute, to be to some extent unsettled in one's convictions. The ordinary notion of doubt thus belongs to a picture which includes a gradated spectrum of epistemic attitudes toward a given proposition falling between two distinct extremes of certitude: complete confidence that the proposition is true and complete confidence that it is false. This is the notion that C. S. Peirce had in mind when he thematized the removal of doubt as the fixation of belief. 12
Cartesian Scepticism
But it is apparently not quite the notion that Descartes has in mind. Notice that, in Descartes' idiom, it is in the first instance opinions, not persons, that are or are not "completely certain", al1d reasons for doubt are not, so to speak, adventitious to these opinions but rather in some sense to be found "in" them. The Cartesian notion of doubtfulness, in short, is evidently the notion of an intrinsic episten1ic feature of the proposition believed, correlative to and contrasting with indubitability or certainty. In contemporary discussions the attitude of certitude is sometimes introduced under the rubric "psychological certainty" and contrasted with the ostensible propositional feature of "logical certainty" , misleadingly suggesting that we are dealing with two species belongil1g to a single epistemic genus. The supposed propositional epistemic features of doubtfulness and certainty nevertheless plainly have something to do with the personal epistemic attitudes of doubt and certitude, and it is consequently reasonable to ask how, on Descartes' view, the two families of concepts are related. His occasional textual equations of doubtfulness with dubitability and certainty with indubitability obviously suggest a straightforward modal analysis: (dl)
A proposition, p, is doubtful, i.e. not certain, whenever it is possible (for someone) to doubt, i.e. to be epistemically irresolute about, whether p.
The san1e text, however, also offers considerations which, at least prima facie, directly confute (dl). For instance, we shortly find Descartes speaking of "beliefs about which doubt is quite impossible, ... for example, that I am here, sitting by the fire, wearing a winter dressing-gown, holding this piece of paper in my hands, and so on" (AT 18 = CS 13). Nor is it clear whether Descartes would concede that it is genuinely possible to be epistemically irresolute or unsettled regarding what he calls "the simplest and most general things"; for example, that "two and three added together are five; and a square has no more than four sides" (AT 20= CS 14).4 This much at least is clear: Once Descartes reaches the conclusion that some proposition is doubtful, although he begins by speaking of withholding assent from it, his self-directed methodological injunction is ultin1ately not, in the manner of a Pyrrhonist epoche, to adopt an attitude of doubt regarding that proposition by suspending belief. Descartes' goal is not ataraxia but 4 An exquisitely guarded statement! Surely it is equally obvious that a square does not haveftwer than four sides. Or is Descartes perhaps worried that he has inadvertently counted one or more of the square's sides several times?
13
Cartesian Scepticism
something "in the sciences ... stable and likely to last". To this end, he instead reduces the quotidian spectrum of epistemic attitudes to just two, its normal end-points, methodologically adopting a stark epistemic dichotomy of opposed certitudes, unconditional affirmation and unconditional denial. Concretely, he proposes not just to modify his degree of confidence in and "hold back ... assent" from propositions for which he can identify any "reason for doubt", but rather definitively to "reject" any such proposition. His methodological counsel is not the suspension of belief but rather active disbelief. Descartes thus begins his Meditations with an epistemic pretence. He will treat propositions for which he can locate a "reason for doubt"-doubtful propositions-as if he were completely confident that they were false (alternatively, to sound another note, as if he knew them to be false). 5 This is one of the ways in which his method of doubt is exaggerated or "hyperbolic" . Peirce notoriously denies that such a radical pretence is genuinely possible: We cannot begin with complete doubt. We must begin with all the prejudices which we actually have. . . These prejudices are not to be dispelled by a maxim, for they are things which it does not occur to us can be questioned. Hence this initial scepticism will be a mere self-deception, and not real doubt ... Let us not pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts. ("SCFI" v. 265)6
And elsewhere he calls the methodological stance urged by Descartes a "n1ake-believe", a "state of mind in which no man ... actually is", and insists that all enquiry, including philosophical enquiry, unavoidably begins in a state of mind "in which [one is] laden with an immense mass of cognition already formed, of which [one] cannot divest [oneself, even] if one would". "[If] pedantry has not eaten all the reality out of you," he writes, then you must recognize that "there is much that you do not doubt, in the least", and "that which you do not at all doubt, you must and do regard as . . . absolutely true" ("WPI" v. 416). 7 The extent to which Peirce's reservations are plausible and relevant to Descartes' project crucially depends on how we are to understand the notion 5 The spectrum of epistemic attitudes reappears only in the Fourth Meditation, with the introduction of indifference (a literal "suspension of judgement", neither affirming nor denying) as the proper response to "every case where the intellect does not have sufficiently clear knowledge at the time when the will deliberates" (AT 59 =CS 41). 6 C. S. Peirce, "Some Consequences of Four Incapacities" ("SCFI"), v. 208-317, in Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss (eds.), Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce (CPCSP) , 6 vols. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1931-5). Citation of CPCSPis by volume and paragraph numbers. (All abbreviations used in the text can be found in the Bibliography.) 7 C. S. Peirce, "What Pragmatism Is" ("WPI"), The Monist (1905), in Hartshorne and Weiss (eds.), CPCSP, v. 411-34.
14
Cartesian Scepticism
of a "reason for doubt" . I have already suggested that the contexts which ultimately interest Descartes are neither the apodictic precincts of pure mathematics nor the practical precincts of mundane affairs, but rather fall within the new territory of mathematical natural science being opened by Ga1ileo and Kepler, a region which appears to share epistemic features with both the demonstrable and the practical. We might well expect Descartes to ask explicitly, then, what a "reason for doubt" looks like in connection with, for example, Kepler's conviction that the planetary orbits are not circles but ellipses having the sun as one focus, or Galileo's claim that the distance traversed by a freely falling object is directly proportional to the square of the elapsed time of fall. Instead, he proposes a more radical course, reflecting his hierarchical and foundationalist commitments: "I will go straight for the basic principles on which all my former beliefs rested." Whatever I have up till now accepted as most true I have acquired either from the senses or through the senses. But from time to time I have found that the senses deceive, and it is prudent never to trust completely those who have deceived us even once. (AT 18 =CS 12)
What should we make of the contrast between what is acquired "from the senses" and what is acquired "through the senses"? What, for that matter, are "the senses"? At this stage of Descartes' reflections there is no reason not to adopt the classical catalogue ill its traditional naive acceptation; namely, sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch regarded as organically based faculties mediating one's perceptual awareness of n1aterial things. 8 On the face of it, then, what is acquired· "from the senses" will be information about (oneself in relation to) items in one's perceptual environment, information expressible in the form of perceptual judgements; for example, again to anticipate, "that I am here, sitting by the fire, wearing a winter dressing-gown, holding this piece of paper in my hands, and so on" (AT 18 = CS 13). But what, on this reading, could then be acquired through, but not from, the senses? As it turns out, what Descartes has in mind is the familiar everyday distinction between first-hand ("eye-witness") knowledge, e.g. perception, and second-hand ("hearsay") knowledge, e.g. testimony. Thus, one knows about, for instance, the circumstances of one's birth "througll" the senses-by seeing 8 At the beginning of the Second Meditation sensing is still characterized as something that "surely does not occur without a body" (AT 27 = CS 18), thus as organically based. Descartes' first recharacterization in turn-on his way to reconceptualizing sensory perception "strictly" as "simply thinking"-brackets the question of an organic basis, but still casts having sensory perceptions as being "aware of bodily things" (as it were through the senses) (AT 29 =CS 19), thus as mediating perceptual awareness of material things.
15
Cartesian Scepticism
photographs, hearing one's parents' accounts, etc.-but not "from" the senses. This intended contrast could clearly use some further elucidation, but, here, I propose instead to treat the notion of a distinction between what is acquired "from" and "through" the senses as an occasion to begin to explore some interesting adjoining regions of the conceptual space of epistemology that is the overall object of the present study. To this end, I will suggest two alternative parsings of Descartes' distinction. To begin with, let us remind ourselves of the Socratic/Platonic doctrine of amnemnesis or recollection. Observe Socrates in the process of questioning Meno's young slave: Does not this line from one corner to the other cut each of these figures in two?- Yes. So these are four equal lines which enclose this figure?-They are.... Each of these lines cuts off half of each of the four figures inside it, does it not?-Yes. How many of this size are there in this figure?-Four. How many in this?-Two. What is the relation of four to two?-Double. How n1any feet in this?-Eight. Based on what line?-This one. That is, on the line that stretches fron1 corner to corner of the four-foot figure?-Yes. Clever men call this the diagonal, so that if diagonal is its name, you say that the double figure would be that based on the diagonal?-Most certainly, Socrates. 9
The conversation here plainly concerns a series of diagrams, figures scratched in the dirt or sand. Using demonstrative expressions, Socrates directs the lad's attention to various parts and features of the diagrams: "these figures", "these lines" . Finally, the boy points out a line-"this one"-suitable to serve as the side of the sought square of double area, the eight-(square-)foot square. The senses are unquestionably implicated in this process. The boy sees what Socrates shows him and hears what Socrates asks him; if he did not, no "recollecting" could occur. But, although it constantly adverts to the diagrams scratched in the dirt, the conversation is not about those diagrams as ephemeral items in its participants' perceptual environment. The conversation is about lines and squares and numbers, mathematical items not sensorily available in any perceptual environment. The diagrams function as "visual aids" for Socrates' "midwifery", helping the young slave to "recollect" a relatively elementary theorem of Euclidean geometry, to find the knowledge not within the diagrams, but "within himself" (84d). 9 As translated by G. M. A. Grube, in Plato: Five Dialogues (Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett, 1981), 85a-85c.
16
Cartesian Scepticism
In contrast to information about (oneself in relation to) items in one's perceptual environment acquired "from the senses", then, mathen1atical knowledge is here attained only "through the senses". Indeed, the pattern illustrated in the Meno is a standard motif within the rationalists' epistemological repertoire: Sensory experience is not a source of (demonstrative) n1athematical knowledge, but it can serve as an indispensable occasion for such knowledge, a "trigger", required to activate and bring to explicit consciousness an innate knowledge which is otherwise only tacitly present. The Socratic model of midwifery and recollection strikingly reinforces what we might call the "epistemological individualism" of the formalist paradigm. On the one hand, the paradigm takes it for granted that mathematical enquirythe archetype for enquiry per se-is characteristically solitary and a-contextual. Analogously, midwives in general, however helpful, are in principle entirely dispensable. Correlatively, the aim of such enquiry on the Socratic maieutic model is not to bring its subject into a relationship to actualities independent of his epistemic state but to actualize a determinate innate but tacit epistemic state of the individual knower. The initially paradoxical idea of scientific, i.e. mathematical, knowledge of the sensorily encountered world at least begins to make formalist Cartesian sense once it is thought of on the Socratic model, as knowledge attained through, but not acquired from, the senses. The notion of sensory deceptiveness can serve as a point of entry into a further contrast suggested by the distinction between being acquired from and through the senses. We have so far been contrasting (necessary, mathematical) scientific knowledge of objects in general, Socratically attained "through the senses", with (contingent, matter-of-factual) information about the objects in one's immediate perceptual environment, received "from the senses". That what the senses characteristically deceive us about is "objects which are very small or in the distance" , however, suggests that epistemic virtue or vice (also) relevantly attaches to those contingent judgements which depend, inter alia, precisely on the character of one's perceptual environment. On this reading, what is received through the senses will be matter-of-factual information or misinformation about objects. But what, then, is received from the senses? It is tempting to answer, "sensations", but, although that is surely in some sense correct, it is important in this connection to be clear that when Descartes speaks about sensing in epistemic contexts he characteristically has in mind something thoroughly cognitive, and indeed, propositional. To properly appreciate this, however, we need to take a brief look at certain features of the dialectic in the second Meditation. In accordance with the formalist paradigm, Descartes notoriously undertakes to identify having a mind per se with 17
Cartesian Scepticism
having the capacity to reason. 10 His implicit prototype of "thinking" is the reflective deliberation of a mathematician in his study, proving a theorem of analytic geometry. Clearly, however, the sensory presentations and singular indexical cognitions prima facie intrinsic to perceptual experiences ill harmonize with this model. Descartes consequently engages in some remarkable conceptual gymnastics to reconcile the fact and phenomenology of such experiences with his prototypical cogitationes. At the beginning of the second Meditation the senses are explicitly affiliated with the body. Thus, reviewing the results of his n1ethodological doubt, Descartes writes: "[I] have just said that I have no senses and no body ... [But am] I not so bound up with a body and with senses that I cannot exist without them?" (AT 24-5 = CS 16). Shortly thereafter he groups sensing together with such plainly corporeal capacities as eating and walking: Sense-perception? This surely does not occur without a body, and besides, when asleep I have appeared to perceive through the senses many things which I afterwards realized I did not perceive through the senses at all. (AT 27 =CS 18)
The received notion of sensory perception that forms Descartes' point of departure thus implicates the existence of corporeal items in two different ways, through its in1plicit commitment to the existence of sense organs andin its role as a "success verb" contrasting with "appearing" to perceive through the senses (e.g. dreaming)-to the existence of perceived objects. A mere two pages later, however, Descartes has managed to bracket both of these existential commitments: Lastly, it is also the same "I" who has sensory perceptions, or is aware of bodily things as it were through the senses. For exan1ple, I am now seeing light, hearing a noise, feeling heat. But [it is possible that] I am asleep, so [I can suppose] all this is false. Yet I certainly seem to see, to hear, and to be warmed. This cannot be false; what is called 'having a sensory perception' (sentire) is just this, and in this restricted sense of the term it is simply thinking. (AT 29 =CS 19; first emphasis mine)
This is a pregnant passage, and we will have both reason and occasion to return to it later. At this point, however, we can extract from it the conclusion that when Descartes speaks of "sensory perception" one thing that he evidently has in mind is a certain sort of belief, in particular, a belief regarding how matters stand with respect to the objects in his immediate environn1ent and their sensory qualities. Such a belief is precisely the sort of thing that can 10 Hence, for instance, his conviction that non-reasoning animals ("brutes") are simply sophisticated organic automata.
18
Cartesian Scepticism
be correct or incorrect. The senses will be "deceptive" whenever such a sensory belief does not fit one's actual surroundings. !fone is not being deceived, one thereby receives-"through the senses"; that is, through the medium of one's sensings-information about the nature and disposition of objects in one's perceptual environment; if one is being deceived, only misinformation. But what, on this reading, would be received "from the senses"? The answer implicit in the passage from the second Meditation is: whatever one seems to see, hear, and feel. But what is that? One answer perhaps also suggested by the passage is proper sensibles-"light", "a noise", "heat"-but, while there is surely something correct about that, at this point we must tread very carefully. In particular, although we may later uncover good reasons for doing so, we must here resist the temptation straightway to identify such proper sensibles with aspects of the perceptual state of the perceiving subject. As far as the present text is concerned, the light, noise, and heat that one seems to see, hear, or feel are ostensible features of one's perceptual environment-e.g. the light, noise, and heat ofafire-and they are perceived as ostensible features of that environment. In the first instance, that is, proper sensibles are prima facie contents of regions of space. I I Thus, for instance, there looks, sounds, and feels to be a bright yelloworange, crackling, warm fire (over there). On this account, propositional form is already implicated in that which one receives from the senses. The Cartesian way to think of what is received "from the senses", in other words, also seems to be as a series of spontaneous beliefs; for example, that there is a bright yellow-orange, crackling, warm fire situated thus and so (in relation to me) in space. Call these "sensory beliefs". The senses are "deceptive" whenever the spontaneous sensory beliefs received "from" then1 are false. 12 11
Compare Kant's notion of intensive magnitudes as "the real" in space (and time) (cf. A 166-76
= B207-18). Reflection on the role of space in such experiences of seeming to see, hear, and feel reveals that the light, noise, and heat in question here not only aren't aspects of the subject's sensory state, but indeed couldn't be. Not themselves being in space, aspects of an individual's sensory state couldn't (literally) instantiate the shapes and locations that proper sensibles seem to have. These observations form one useful point of entry into Wilfrid Sellars' celebrated critique of the "Myth of the Given" (see e.g. "The Lever of Archimedes", The Monist, 64 (1981), pp. 3-36). 12 Descartes does, of course, recognize what he calls the "second grade of sensory response", comprising "all the immediate effects produced in the mind as a result of its being united with a bodily organ which is affected ... Such effects include the perceptions of pain, pleasure, thirst, hunger, colours, sound, taste, smell, heat, cold, and the like", as well as a "first grade" which is "limited to the immediate stimulation of the bodily organs by external objects". But he makes it clear that when he speaks of the reliability or deceptiveness of the senses what he has in n1ind is the "third grade" of sensory response; that is, "all the judgements about things outside us which we have been accustomed to make from our earliest years": "It is clear that we are not here dealing with the first and second grades of sensory response, because no falsity can occur in them." (See the sixth set of Replies (AT 437-8 = CS 294-6).
19
Ca rtesia n Scepticism
On our first alternative parsing, what is received "from" the senses is distinguished from what is received "through" the senses as contingency is distinguished from necessity; that is, as contingent information about the objects in one's immediate perceptual environment is distinguished from necessary scientific knowledge of objects in general. Only in the context of a SocraticPlatonic identification of the real with what is necessary, eternal, and unchangeable can this distinction be identified with the further distinction between appearance and reality. On our second alternative parsing, in contrast, what is received "from" the senses is distinguished from what is received "through" the senses in essence as a hypothesis is distinguished from a conclusion, both, however, still concerned with the nature and disposition of objects in one's immediate perceptual environment. This distinction, in turn, can be straightforwardly identified with a distinction between how things seem and how they are, and so with a distinction between appearance and reality, but only in a non-Socratic-Platonic sense which allows that how things seem can turn out to be how things are. So far, that is, there is no reason not to understand a belief regarding how things seem as simply a guarded, cautious, or non-con1mittal belief about how things are. Descartes notoriously adopts the Scholastic transposition of this prima facie distinction between two modes of belief, tentative and settled, into two modes of being, "objective" and "formal", but, properly u.nderstood, a thoroughly cognitive model of sensory experience is arguably incompatible with the notion that "appearances" constitute a distinctive category of entities. It is thus interesting to notice that Descartes' epistemic terminology at this point in fact does not prejudge such ontological questions. What has proved son1etimes deceptive are "the senses", not "the (sensory) appearances". Despite its being "prudent never to trust completely those who have deceived us even once" (AT 18 = CS 12), Descartes does not proceed to con, clude that the fact that "the senses occasionally deceive us" is itselfa reason for doubting the truth of any specific sensory belief. On the contrary, as he himself goes on to point out, in the absence of special considerations, it would be literally mad to call into question most of one's ordinary sensory beliefs. Yet although the senses occasionally deceive us with respect to objects which are very small or in the distance, there are many other beliefs about which doubt is quite impossible, even though they are derived from the senses-for example, that I am here, sitting by the fire, wearing a winter dressing-gown, holding this piece of paper in my hands, and so on ... Unless perhaps I were to liken myself to madmen, whose brains are so damaged by the persistent vapours of melancholia that they firmly maintain they are kings when they are paupers, or say they are dressed in purple when they 20
Cartesian Scepticism are naked, or that their heads are made of earthenware, or that they are pumpkins, or made of glass. But such people are insane, and I would be thought equally mad if I took anything from them as a model for myself. (AT 18-19 =CS 12-13)13
On the epistemic picture implicit in these remarks, we continuously find ourselves with spontaneous sensory beliefs regarding the contents of our perceptual environment, most of which we are also quite properly inclined unreflectively to accept, endorse, and act upon. Such sensory beliefs, that is, are not per se intrinsically dubious or uncertain. Subsequent reflection, however, also reveals that these spontaneous sensory beliefs fall into two rough groups: Some of them, e.g. those concerning "objects which are very small or in the distance", are sometimes "deceptive"; others, Descartes says, concern matters "about which doubt is quite impossible". One natural interpretation of these remarks is to see the dialectic here as moving within the confines of a tacit theory regarding factors conducing to perceptual error, although Descartes does not explicitly put it that way. His wording suggests that any sensory belief about "objects which are very small or in the distance", for instance, is n10re likely to be "deceptive" than a belief regarding one's more immediate perceptual environment, "for example, that I am here, sitting by the fire, wearing a winter dressing-gown", but there is no reason to suppose that this is so, for example, with respect to the spontaneous sensory belief that some object is very small or far away. If we take Descartes to be adverting to some such implicit theory of factors conducing to perceptual error, then the basic sort of "reason for doubt" attaching to a given sensory belief will be the fact that it has been formed in unfavourable perceptual circumstances. Since sensory beliefs about, for instance, the shapes of distant objects are less reliable than the corresponding beliefs about objects in one's immediate perceptual environment, the fact that one's current spontaneous sensory belief concerns, for instance, the shape of a distant tower-is a belief, for instance, to the effect that the tower is round 14_gives one some reason 13 We should, I think, pause to appreciate that Descartes' epoch was populated by a much more impressive group of lunatics than our own. I venture to suppose that not one contemporary psychiatrist or psychologist has ever been approached by a prospective client whose complaint is that his head is made of earthenware or that he is a pumpkin. Nowadays it is all diffuse anxieties and sexual neuroses. It is not entirely clear how to explain this striking historical degradation of lunacy, but my own inclination is to blame the dramatic decline in occurrences of the persistent vapours of melancholia. What kind of insanity can one expect, after all, fronl such milksop causes as "stress" and "tension"? 14 "Sometimes towers which had looked round from a distance appeared square from close up; and enormous statues standing on their pediments did not seem large when observed from the ground." (AT 76 = CS 53).
21
Cartesian Scepticism
for suspecting that it may be false. It is indeed at least prudent "never to place our complete trust" in such sensory beliefs formed in such circumstances. Extremes of size or distance will be only two among indefinitely many conditions which might (be discovered to) negatively affect one's perceptual reliability vis-a-vis particular sensible features of objects. In general, however, it will not be a sensory belief's specific content as such which supplies a "reason for doubt", i.e. a reason for accepting the (modal) epistemic conclusion that the belief in question may be false, but rather that content considered in relation to an ancillary epistemic fact; for example, that the circumstances in which the belief spontaneously occurred are (known to be) unfavourable for reliable perception of the relevant sensible characteristics. Contrary to Descartes' programmatic methodological formulations, in other words, the reason for doubt in such cases is not to be found "in" the belief doubted. No such "reason for doubt", in contrast, will attach to sensory beliefs formed in theoretically optimal perceptual circumstances. On the present interpretation, these will be the beliefs about which, Descartes says, "doubt is quite impossible". It is important to see that this remark makes sense only if acceptance or endorsement is the legitimate" default" epistemic stance vis-avis such spontaneous sensory beliefs; that is, only if such beliefs are not intrinsically dubious or uncertain per se. The specific inference from content to doubtfulness that we have just been examining is mediated by a general premise regarding content, circumstances, and reliability, and so presupposes, inter alia, that the falsehood of specific beliefs formed in problematic circumstances, e.g. sensory beliefs concerning the shapes or colours of "objects which are very small or in the distance", can legitimately be discovered and corrected by appeal to spontaneous sensory beliefs formed in unproblematic circumstances; for example, the sensory beliefs with which one finds on~self on closer approach to the originally distant objects. Without such a specific history of known "deceptiveness" attaching to the circumstances of origin of particular spontaneous sensory beliefs, however, "rejecting" those beliefs is, as Descartes himself correctly observes, quite literally mad. Earlier, I identified one respect in which Descartes' methodological doubt is exaggerated or "hyperbolic"; namely, in treating what is shown to be doubtful as if it were known to be false (Descartes' "epistemic pretence"). At this stage of his argument, doubtfulness is established for individual sensory beliefs only through the citing of positive reasons for doubt attaching to determinate families of beliefs formed in determinate kil1ds of circumstances. The specific reason for doubting the truth of a particular spontaneous sensory belief regarding the shape of a given tower, for instance, will be that sensory 22
Cartesian Scepticism
beliefs about the shapes of distant objects have generally (regularly or frequently) proved to be unreliable (mistaken or "deceptive"). Only Descartes' hyperbolic epistemic pretence, however, leads from this observation to the conclusion that the belief in question should be rejected; that is, treated as false. Normally, all that is called for is a more modest modification of one's level of confidence. How likely it is that a particular spontaneous sensory belief is mistaken, that is, characteristically depends upon just how unfavourable the epistem.ic circu.mstances are in which it occurs. What it is reasonable to believe all things considered about, for example, the shape of a distant tower will depend upon one's overall track record vis-it-vis such beliefs, taking into account such disparate matters as the general acuity of one's vision, the actual distances involved, the character of the ambient lighting, the apparent material con1position of the tower, what is known about regional tower-building customs, and so on. The fact that the sensory belief concerns a distant object is indeed relevant to its epistemic appraisal, but, unless one has explicitly adopted Descartes' methodological pretence, it is never in and of itself epistemically determinative. Far from "undermining the foundations" of opinions "acquired either from ... or through the senses", then, the" deceptiveness" of particular spontaneous sensory beliefs is available to fund a "reason for doubt" only if the majority of such beliefs are epistemically unproblematic; that is, are "beliefs about which doubt is qu.ite impossible". At this stage of the argumel1t, doubtfulness is still tied to particular epistemic circumstances which one can have positive reason to suppose obtain. Such dubitable sensory beliefs necessarily form a proper subclass of spontaneous sensory beliefs in general. Plainly, Descartes will need to appeal to different sorts of considerations if he hopes to "undermine" the whole class of sensory beliefs per se without lapsing into prima facie madness. And so, notoriously, he does: As if I were not a man who sleeps at night, and regularly has all the same experiences while asleep as madmen do when awake-indeed sometimes even more improbable ones. How often, asleep at night, am I convinced of just such familiar events-that I am here in my dressing-gown, sitting by the fire-when in fact I am lying undressed in bed! Yet at the moment my eyes are certainly wide awake when I look at this piece of paper; I shake my head and it is not asleep; as I stretch out and feel my hand I do so deliberately, and I know what I am doing. All this would not happen with such distinctness to someone asleep. Indeed! As if I did not remember other occasions when I have been tricked by exactly similar thoughts while asleep! As I think about this more carefully, I see plainly that there are never any sure signs by means of which being 23
Cartesian Scepticism awake can be distinguished from being asleep. The result is that I begin to feel dazed, and this very feeling only reinforces the notion that I may be asleep. (AT 19 = CS 13)
Much of what is going on in this paragraph we can simply ignore. Descartes begins by remarking that he regularly has, while asleep, "all the same experiences ... indeed sometimes even more improbable ones" as his company of exemplary lunatics do when awake. IS The suggestion that someone who insists that his head is made of earthenware or that he is a pumpkin or made of glass is reporting, so to speak, a corresponding characteristic experience is as intriguing as it is implausible, but it is also not at this point centrally apposite to Descartes' project. His chief concern in the text at hand is surely rather with precisely those earlier "beliefs about which doubt is quite impossible". What is important is not that one can have strange and striking dreams but that one can have n1undane and boringly familiar ones. Similarly, we can safely ignore the paragraph's peculiar last sentence. Whether we interpret Descartes' talk of feeling "dazed" as adverting to a literal dulling or paralysis of his mental capacities or, more figuratively, to the less dramatic cognitive malaise of being confused and bewildered, the implicit suggestion that the experience is somehow (epistemically) relevant to the question of whether he is or is not asleep ren1ains utterly obscure. Descartes adduces no considerations at all that would serve to connect his dazed feeling with his beliefs about sleeping and dreaming. It is not immediately clear whether the balance of the paragraph actually presents an argument, but if it does, the intended proximate conclusion appears to be that "there are never any sure signs by means of which being awake can be distinguished from being asleep". Assuming this is the case, then, how is the conclusion to be understood, and what reasons, if any, does Descartes give us for supposing that it is true? What distinction between "being awake" and "being asleep", for instance, does Descartes have in mind here? Just what is it for which we are supposed to lack "sure signs"? This much seems clear: On Descartes' view "being asleep" (i.e. dreaming) resembles "being awake" in that, like a wakeful slJbject (a perceiver), a sleeping subject (a dreamer) also continuously finds himself with a series of spontaneous sensory beliefs. Now, we recall from our earlier anticipatory discussion of the second Meditation that, construed "strictly", having such spontaneous sensory beliefs ("sensing") is not perceiving-seeing light, hearing a noise, 15 I personally cannot imagine what experiences could be "even more improbable" than having a head made of earthenware or being a pumpkin, but if we take Descartes at his word here, many of his dreams ("regularly", he says) must have been real humdingers!
24
Cartesian Scepticism feeling heat, etc.-but only seeming to perceive (to see, hear, feel, etc.). It is therefore worth noting that although Descartes is evidently confident that such dream episodes are not actual perceptions, he seems never to question the view that they are actually beliefs. Alternatively, however, one might argue that if there is a difference between perceiving an X and dreaming that one is perceiving an X, then there is an analogous difference between actually having some sensory belief and dreaming that one is having that sensory belief; that is, that dreaming that one believes that p is not an instance of believing that p.16 On this view, the context "I am dreaming that ..." suspends all epistemic predicates. In particular, dreaming that (one believes that) one is or is not dreaming will not be an instance of believing that one is or is not dreaming. A genuine belief that one is not dreaming, in consequence, could never be mistaken-but, "vacuously" as it were, neither could a dream to the effect that (one believed that) one was not dreaming, since dream contents would no more be subject to such epistemic evaluations than, for example, poems are. 17 On Descartes' view, however, some dream episodes are indeed sensory beliefs, and so epistemically assessable as correct or mistaken. The essential difference between being awake and being asleep concerns the way in which the spontaneous sensory beliefs occurring in the two states are occasioned. In perception, they directly result from the action of "bodily things" on the senses; in dreaming, they do not. 18 It is important to be clear that the distinction between wakeful perceiving and dreaming is independent of that between true and mistaken or "deceptive" sensory beliefs. A distant square tower may (deceptively) look round, but a wakeful perceiver's spontaneous sensory belief to the effect that the tower is round is occasioned by the action of the object itself on his visual sensory apparatus no less than his non-deceptive sensory beliefs regarding the shape of a tower situated immediately before him in broad daylight. Correlatively, I can dream that I am "here in my dressing-gown, sitting by the fire-when in fact I am lying undressed in bed", in which 16 This is the view adopted by Norman Malcolm in "Dreaming and Skepticism", Philosophical Review, 65 (1956), pp. 14-37. 17 It is instructive to consider in this connection Rene Magritte's painting N'est ce pas une pipe, which depicts a (tobacco) pipe and the inscription "N'est ce pas une pipe" ("This is not a pipe"). Treating the inscription as subject to epistemic evaluation leads to a wonderful series of conceptual tangles. 18 The qualifier 'directly' acknowledges the possibility, which Descartes himself evidently accepts, that "the visions which come in sleep are like paintings, which must have been fashioned in the likeness of things that are real" (AT 19 =CS 13). If this is so, a dreamer's spontaneous sensory beliefs might also all ultimately be occasioned by the action of bodily things on his senses, although only remotely.
25
Cartesian Scepticism case the spontaneous sensory beliefs constituting my dream will be "deceptive" . But I can surely also dream that I am lying undressed in bed "when in fact I am lying undressed in bed", in which case my spontaneous sensory beliefs will be non-deceptively correct. 19 To begin with, then, being asleep apparently functions, analogously to extremes of distance and size, as a circumstance that has been found negatively to affect the reliability of families of spontaneous sensory beliefs. Indeed, Descartes in essence reports having discovered the general unreliability of dreams: "As if I did not remember other occasions when I have been tricked by exactly similar thoughts while asleep!" On the face of it, this remark makes sense only if the deceptiveness of a dreamer's spontaneous sensory belief that he is clothed in a dressing-gown and seated next to a fireplace can be discovered and legitimately corrected by appeal to the beliefs with which he subsequently finds himself upon awakening, much as the deceptiveness of a perceiver's spontaneous sensory belief that a distant tower is round can be discovered and corrected by appeal to the sensory beliefs with which he subsequently finds himself in more favourable perceptual circumstances; for example, on closer approach to the object. Furthermore, in the absence of specific positive reasons for supposing so, to believe that one is dreaming is prima facie no less mad than to believe that one is a pumpkin or has a head made of earthenware. What, then, does Descartes' argument gain by shifting our attention from deceptive perceptions to deceptive dreams? Descartes' proximate conclusion, let us recall, is t11at there are "never any sure signs by means of which being awake can be distinguished fronl being asleep". Given our interpretive progress to this point this amounts to the claim that there are no sure signs to distinguish those (generally reliable) sensory beliefs directly occasioned by the actions of objects on the sense organs (perceptions) from those (generally unreliable) sensory beliefs otherwise occasioned; for example, by electrochemical processes occurring in the brain during sleep (dreams). Yet Descartes also evidently suggests that it is possible 19 In contrast to various other interpreters, Barry Stroud-in his influential work, The Significance of Philosophical Scepticism (SPS), (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983)-is properly sensitive to this point. His reconstruction of a generally Cartesian scepticism thus invokes"counter possibilities" to p having the generic form of a non-contradictory proposition q-paradigmatically, the proposition that one is dreaming that p-that is (known to be) incompatible, not with p, but rather with one's knowing that p: "[But] if it is obvious ... that Descartes must know that he is not dreaming if he is to know that he is sitting by the fire, it cannot be simply because the possibility in question is known to be incompatible with what he claims to know. It is not" (SPS 29). (As we shall see when we turn explicitly to Stroud's arguments, whether such a corresponding "dream proposition" in fact is incompatible with one's knowing that p is a surprisingly complicated question.)
26
Cartesian Scepticism
to discover that some dreams contain so to speak deceptive counterfeits of wakeful perceptions, and, if this is so, then it must be possible justifiably and legitimately to classify at least some spontaneous sensory beliefs under that category (i. e. to recognize them as dreams). It is not too surprising, then, to find Descartes himself, at the end of the sixth Meditation, surveying the guiding epistemic principles for doing just that: [Dreams] are never linked by memory with all the other actions of life as waking experiences are. If, while I am awake, anyone were suddenly to appear to me and then disappear immediately, as happens in sleep, so that I could not see where he had come from or where he had gone to, it would not be unreasonable for me to judge that he was a ghost, or a vision created in my brain, rather than a real man. But when I distinctly see where things come from and where and when they come to me, and when I can connect my perceptions of them with the whole of the rest of my life without a break, then I am quite certain that when I encounter these things I am not asleep but awake. (AT 89-90 =CS 61-2)
On this account, the "perceptions" (i.e. sensory beliefs) constituting one's waking experience form a mutually spatio-temporally and causally coherent system. A dream, in contrast, consists of spontaneous sensory beliefs which are not "linked by memory" with the other beliefs belonging to this system. Just as a perceiver can legitimately correct some of his "deceptive" spontaneous sensory beliefs by appealing to others occurring in more favourable perceptual circun1stances, so too a dreamer can evidently legitimately reclassify some of his spontaneous sensory beliefs as dreams by appealing to their lack of coherence with the systematic perceptions which he recalls. But, if this is right, then does not such a lack of coherence serve precisely as a "sure sign" by which to distinguish being asleep from being awake? Well, not exactly. Descartes' reference to memory here sensitizes us to the fact that, in both instances, the episten1ic evaluations in question are retrospective. A perceiver corrects a "deceptive" sensory belief by appeal to later perceptions; a dreamer reclassifies some spontaneous sensory beliefs from perceptions to dreams on the basis of a subsequent appeal to memories of an otherwise coherent and systematic sensory experience. Strictly speaking, then, a lack of coherence is, at best, a "sure sign" by which to distinguish having been asleep from having been awake. 2o The continuous-present tense in 20 Why "at best"? Well, so far, I have been treating Descartes' expression "sure signs" as roughly equivalent to "good and sufficient evidence (or: indications)". There is some reason to suppose, however, that Descartes intends 'sure' quite literally as adverting to conclusive evidence or even some species of certainty, and, if so, coherence or its lack will then fail to provide a sure sign of the waking/sleeping distinction in any tense.
27
Cartesian Scepticism
Descartes' proximate conclusion, in other words, is not adventitious but essential. Furthermore, we may note that the sixth Meditation's coherence test is arguably impotent to resolve even retrospective questions regarding the epistemic status, as dream episodes or waking perception, of those mundane sensory beliefs which are Descartes' particular concern in the first Meditation. For, unlike his later hypothetical "perceptions" of a man appearing and disappearing ex and in nihilo, such spontaneous sensory beliefs as that he is seated beside the fireplace in his study, clothed in his dressing-gown, and confronting a sheet of paper are just the sorts of boringly ordinary beliefs which can coherently be "linked by memory" with the spatio-temporally and causally systematic collection of perceptions that constitute his waking life. 21 These last two observations highlight an important difference between dreaming and various other circumstances that can be discovered to affect the reliability of spontaneous sensory beliefs, such as extremes of size or distance. That an object is small or distant is itself in the first instance the content of a sensory belief. Size and distance, that is, are themselves sensible qualities, and so can be epistemically available to a perceiver, qua perceptual circumstances, in precisely the same way that the sensible qualities whose reliable ascription such circumstances can (be known to) negatively influence, e.g. shape and colour, are epistemically available to her, as concurrent aspects or elements of a single (synchronic) complex perceptual episode. Our most recent considerations, however, highlight the fact that this is not true of the perceptual circumstance occurring in a dream. Although being asleep is an epistemic circumstance which can (retrospectively be discovered to) negatively affect the reliability of spontaneous sensory beliefs, occurring in a dream is not itself a sensible quality, and so the fact that a given sensory belief is occurring in that unfavourable circumstance need not be, and characteristically is not, reflected in or indicated by any feature of the dream's content. Descartes' spontaneous sensory belief that he is clothed in his dressing-gown and seated beside the fireplace in his study concerns only familiar and highly salient "middle-sized" features of his immediate perceptual environment. There is, in other words, nothing about its content to suggest that the circumstances in which it occurs are among those (discovered to be) characteristic 21 Parenthetically, we should note that Descartes' hypothetical appearing and disappearing man is a commonplace of the world of Star Trek, whose inhabitants are regularly "beamed" from location to location. Although I will not take time to pursue them here, this observation can serve as the point of entry to a number of interesting branch dialectics, including the notion of systematic dreams and central memory-related aspects of Wittgenstein's "Private-Language Argument".
28
Cartesian Scepticism
for unreliable wakil1g perception. And, crucially, that content is also entirely non-committal, so to speak, regarding the question of whether the given spontaneous sensory belief is a (generally reliable) wakeful perceiving or a (generally unreliable) constituent of a dream. Descartes' claim that there are "never any sure signs by n1eans of which being awake can be distinguished from being asleep" thus amounts to the conclusion that nothing about the content of any spontaneous sensory belief indicates whether it is a wakeful perceiving, occasioned by the action of "bodily things" on the senses, or an episode occurring within a dream, occasioned in some other way during sleep (assuming that such episodes are properly characterized as beliefs in the first place). Nor should this come as a surprise; for, it is arguably the case that, irrespective of whether the beliefs in question are sensory or, for instance, purely mathematical, whatever I can believe, I can also dream. 22 One thing Descartes gains by shifting his attention from perceptions to drean1s, then, is a source of potential "deceptiveness" which is in a significant way content-independent. But does this move advance his project of establishing the dubitability of sensory beliefs per se; that is, of "undermining the foundations" of all those opinions "acquired either from ... or through the senses"? Descartes seems to think so; for, his next sentence apparently invokes precisely the "epistemic pretence" of falsehood that, according to his adopted method, is licensed by having found some reason for doubt attaching to a given belief: Suppose then that I am dreaming, and that these particulars-that my eyes are open, that I am moving my head and stretching out my hands-are not true. Perhaps, indeed, I do not even have such hands or such a body at all. (AT 19 = CS 13)
Evidently, then, Descartes takes himself to have established the existence of "reasons for doubting" that his eyes are open, that he is moving his head, that he is extending his hands, and perhaps even that he has hands, eyes, and a head of the familiar sorts. But what reasons for doubting? Of course, if he is dreaming, then that he is dreaming is indeed a reason for doubting each of these beliefs. Ex hypothesi, the spol1taneous sensory beliefs that occur during 22 Indeed, the sentential matrix "I dreamed that - - " is apparently completely catholic and non-restrictive with regard to its substituends, on the face of it admitting even falsehoods which could not plausibly be believed-e.g. "I dreamed that 2 + 3 equalled 17" and perhaps even "I dreamed that I did not exist" . (Long ago, when we were graduate students together, Michael Dunn reported having dreamed that he was a limit point on the real nutnber line.) The corresponding matrix in the continuous present, "I am dreaming that --", is less accommodating, but, as we have seen, raises interesting questions of its own.
29
Ca rtesia n Scepticism sleep as constituents of one's dreams are generally unreliable and, indeed, can be known to be so. Like waking perceptions occurring in unfavourable perceptual conditions, sensory beliefs occurring in dreams are legitimately subject to doubt. A reasonfor believing that he was (only) dreaming that his eyes are open, etc. would thus also be a reason for doubting that his eyes are open, etc. But does Descartes have any reason at all to believe that he is dreaming? Clearly, he does not. Indeed, the point of the preceding argumentation was precisely to establish that nothing about the content of his mundane occurrent beliefs, sensory or otherwise, could give him any reason at all to believe that he is dreaming, and it is difficult to see what other reasons Descartes might have for reaching that conclusion. 23 Nor does he here suggest any additional relevant considerations. Instead, he incorporates the belief that he is dreaming itself within his "epistemic pretence". He supposes it. On the face of it, this represents a clear departure from Descartes' announced method. Instead of finding a reason for doubting (in the ordinary, attitudinal, sense) that he is seated with open eyes beside his fireplace, he now assumes orposits such a reason. No considerations at all have been adduced, in other words, to show that the sensory beliefs in question are doubtful persein the only sense of 'doubtful' we have so far encountered. During the previous stages of the argument the doubtfulness of a belief was tied to its occurrence in particular epistemically problematic circumstances which one hadpositive reason to suppose obtained. Dubitable sensory beliefs thus necessarily formed a proper subclass of sensory beliefs in general. Since Descartes has no positive reason to suppose that he is dreaming, however, his spontaneous sensory belief that he is seated with open eyes beside his fireplace is not in that sense doubtful. At this point in his reasoning, then, Descartes can salvage his methodological commitments only by implicitly modifying the notion of a "reason for doubt" and, correlatively, what it means for a belief to be "doubtful" . His "reason for doubt" here cannot be that he is dreaming (for he may not be), nor that he has some reason to believe that he is dreaming (for he has no such reason). Indeed, in the light of the coherence considerations later adduced in the sixth Meditation, the very ordinariness of his spontaneous sensory beliefs arguably gives Descartes some reason to believe that he is not dreaming. If 23 This is not to say that stretches of experience cannot, on Descartes' view, warrantedly or justifiably be judged to be constituted by series of dream episodes at all. They indeed can be-but only retrospectively. What Descartes suggests cannot be justified or warranted is a first-person judgement to the effect that one is there and then dreaming; that is, the judgement one would express by asserting "I am dreaming here and now" .
30
Cartesian Scepticism
Descartes has a reason for doubting that he is seated with open eyes beside his fireplace, then, it can only be that he could be dreaming. The mere possibility that his spontaneous sensory beliefs could be episodes in a dream, and so occurring in an epistemic context known to be generally unreliable, now suffices to render those beliefs"doubtful" . What sort of modality is at issue here? What sort of possibility is the "mere possibility" that one is dreaming? Given the epistemic context within which Descartes invokes such possibilities, it is clear that logical contingency alone will not do. It is logically possible to dream that 2 + 3 =5 or even that one oneself thinks and/or exists, but that possibility does not suffice to render those beliefs doubtful. "[Whether] I am awake or asleep, two and three added together are five" (AT 20 = CS 14). A popular answer is "epistemic possibility", meaning thereby logical consistency with what one knows, but, while an argument in the Cartesian style could perhaps be formulated in terms of such a notion, it is highly questionable as a bit of exegesis. On the one hand, at this point in the Meditations, Descartes has not advanced any positive theses regarding what he does know. For all he has so far said, it might turn out that he knows nothing at all, and, should that be the case, the supposed epistemic modality would collapse into its alethic counterpart. On the other hand, it would be premature to conclude, on the basis of the arguments offered up to this point, that Descartes does not know that he's not dreaming. One would evidently need at least an additional pren1ise to the effect that such knowledge requires certainty and indubitability or, at least, the availability of "sure signs", and even if Descartes is in fact implicitly committed to such a premise, it is by no means obvious that he should be. Indeed, interpreting the notion of knowledge in terms of certainty and ind-ubitability at this stage of the dialectic renders the broadening of reasons for doubt to include "mere epistemic possibilities" question begging. The present proposal is that Descartes knows that he is not then and there dreaming that he is seated by the fire in his dressing-gown (briefly: knows that he is not dreaming that s) only if the proposition that he is not dreaming that s is certain and indubitable. According to the n1ethodological strategy operative throughout the first Meditation, however, a proposition will be certain and indubitable only when there can be found in it no "reason for doubt". Conversely, if Descartes can find a reason for doubting that he is not dreaming that s, then the proposition that he is not dreaming that s will not be certain and indubitable, and hence not something that he knows. But can Descartes find a reason for doubting that he is not then and there dreaming that s? What could that reason be? 31
Cartesian Scepticism
Well, if Descartes had a reason for believing that he was dreaming that s, then that would be a reason for doubting that he was not dreaming that s, but, as we have seen, one clear implication of his argument is that he does not and cannot, then and there, have any such reason for believing that he is then and there dreaming that s. But then, as far as I can see, Descartes' only other possible reason for doubting that he is not then and there dreaming that 5 is the alleged fact that he could be dreaming that s. But could he be? Well, on the proposed interpretation, he could be dreaming that 5 only if it is epistemically possible that he is dreaming that 5; that is, only if he does not know anything inconsistent with the proposition that he is dreaming that 5, and, in particular, only if he does not know that he is not then and there dreaming that s. And now the circularity should be apparent; for, what reason is there to suppose that Descartes does not know that he is not dreaming that s? Ex hypothesi, only that it is not certain and indubitable that he is not dreaming that 5; that is, that there is a reason for doubting that he is not then and there dreaming that s. But if we interpret the modality relevant to reasons for doubt in terms of compatibility with what is known, knowledge in terms of certainty and indubitability, and certainty and indubitability in terms of reasons for doubt, then in the absence of any independent non-modal reasons for doubting that he is not dreaming that 5, there is no way for Descartes to argue for the availability of his alleged modal reasons for doubting that. 24 It will help us to see what has gone wrong here, I think, if we consider how Descartes might know that he is not then and there dreaming that he is seated by the fire in his dressing-gown. How, for instance, do Iknow that I am not here and now (i.e. as I write these words) merely drean1ing that I am seated by my computer in my jeans and T-shirt? The most straightforward answer is that I know lots of other things which imply that I am not dreaming at all. I know that I woke up at about 7.30 this morning and haven't gone back to sleep since then, that it's now about three hours later, that the cold cereal I ate for breakfast a few hours ago didn't satisfy me, that I deliberated about what to wear today and decided that jeans and T-shirt would do since I was planning to spend the day at home working on this chapter, that I sat down at my desk shortly after breakfast, and that (apart from attending to some biological 24 An alternative formulation avoids explicit appeal to the notion of knowledge by identifying the possibility that one is (merely) drean1ing with the inability to rule out that hypothesis. The gain in clarity is only apparent, however, since asking what it means to be "unable to rule out" a given hypothesis immediately reintroduces the original exegetical difficulties. The most natural proposal, of course, is that one can rule out a hypothesis whenever one knows something inconsistent with it, in which case the new formulation becomes a mere notational variant of the "epistemicpossibility" reading which we have just found wanting.
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imperatives) I've been sitting here ever since. All of these things that I know, and many other things besides, collectively imply that I an1 not asleep and dreaming at all, and so, ipso facto, that I am not merely dreaming that I am seated by n1Y computer in my jeans and T-shirt. The point, to put it briskly, is that I know much more than simply what is presented in my immediately current spontaneous sensory beliefs, and that this additional body of knowledge can suffice to rule out the epistemic possibility that those sensory beliefs are (merely) episodes in a drean1. N ow, a Cartesian sympathizer will insist, of course, that I don't know any of these other things, but I submit that we have so far seen no sufficient reason to conclude that this is so. Indeed, what was supposed to show that I cannot know such things was precisely to be an argument for the conclusion that I cannot even know that I am seated at my computer in my jeans and T-shirt. And I am in fact quite willing to grant that if I can't even know that I am seated at my computer, then I also can't know the indefinitely many other things which imply that I am not asleep and dreaming. I'm even willing to grant that if all I know is what is presented in my immediately current spontaneous sensory beliefs, then I do not kl10W that I am seated at my computer wearingjeans and a T-shirt. But it is plainly question begging simply to assume that I cannot know all those other things in an argument intended to den1onstrate, by establishing that I cannot know that I am not asleep and dreaming, that I cannot even know that I am seated at my computer. Similarly, nothing in the first-Meditation reasoning that we've so far had occasion to survey implies that Descartes cannot know much more than what is presented in his immediately current spontaneous sensory beliefs, and, if this is so, then interpreting the modality relevant to the broadened sense of "reasons for doubt", i.e. the modality in "could be dreaming", as epistemic possibility is either gratuitous or question begging. What is needed here is rather a different relative modality, one which relativizes not to what is known (in some unexplicated and problematic sense of "known"), but rather to specific belief contents: Let us say that one could, in the relevant sense, be dreaming that p (alternatively, that it is possible that one is "merely dreaming" that p) whenever the proposition that one is dreaming that p is logically consistent with the falsity of p (i.e. with not-p). In this sense, Descartes indeed could be (merely) dreaming that he is seated by the fire it1 his dressing-gown, but could not be (merely) dreaming that 2 + 3 =5 or that he thinks and/or exists-although it is, of course, logically possible that he be (in fact) dreaming those latter things as well. It is the possibility that he is, in this sense, merely dreaming that Descartes now admits as 33
Cartesian Scepticism
a reason for doubting what is presented in his immediately current spontaneous sensory beliefs. This step decisively severs the connection between Descartes' hypothesized epistemic features ofpropositions, doubtfulness and certainty, and the personal epistemic attitudes toward propositions, doubt and certitude. The doubtfulness of a claim in this sense is no longer a reason actually to doubt it, nor is the absence of certainty a ground for lack of certitude. Descartes' "method of doubt" thereby becomes exaggerated or "hyperbolic" in a second way. The first methodological hyperbole, we recall, consisted in the epistemic pretence of "rejecting" (i.e. treating as if they were known to be false) all "doubtful propositions"; that is, to begin with, those sensory beliefs which there was some positive reason to suppose false by virtue of their occurring in epistemically problematic circumstances. The present step expands the class of "doubtful propositions" to include, in essence, all those sensory beliefs not known to occur in epistemically unproblematic circumstances. That is the second hyperbole. Since any spontaneous sensory belief could be occurring in epistemically problematic circumstances, i.e. as an episode in a dream, all such beliefs are in this sense doubtful. Having in this way first suitably broadened his understanding of "dubitability", Descartes is then indeed in a position to invoke his methodological pretence and assume "that these particulars .. . are not true". At this point, then, Descartes proposes to part company with "the foundations ... acquired ... from the senses". The subsequent stretch of Descartes' first-Meditation text is devoted to spreading the contagion of dubitability, henceforth construed broadly in terms of such (mere) possibilities, from "these particulars" to "corporeal nature in general". The proceedings are informed by the apparent conviction that, in some sense, "the visions which come in sleep are like paintings, which must have been fashioned in the likeness of things that are real" (AT 19 = CS 13). To put this framing hypothesis in another way, Descartes is evidently still cOl1vinced that although specific sensory beliefs are perse dubitable, their contents must bear some resemblance or analogy to what is real. However distorted the impression, sensory contents are related to "things that are real" as ectype to archetype. Thus, although what is specifically received from the senses is always doubtful, such spontaneous sensory beliefs might nevertheless serve as a source of general convictions not similarly subject to doubt; general truths thereby received not from but through the senses. The aim of the argument at this point appears to be to fix and limit the scope of the relevant analogy: 34
Cartesian Scepticism Perhaps ... at least these general kinds of things-eyes, head, hands and the body as a whole-are things which are not imaginary but are real and exist. For even when painters try to create sirens and satyrs ... they simply jumble up the lirnbs of various animals. Or if perhaps they manage to think up something so new that nothing remotely sinlilar has ever been seen before-something which is therefore completely fictitious and unreal--at least the colours used in the composition must be real. By similar reasoning, although these general kinds of things-eyes, head, hands and so on-could be imaginary, it must at least be admitted that certain other even simpler and more universal things are real. These are as it were the real colours from which we fornl all the images of things, whether true or false, that occur in our thought. This class appears to include corporeal nature in general, and its extension; the shape of extended things; their quantity, or size and number of these things; the place in which they may exist, the time through which they may endure, and so on. (AT 19-20 =CS 14)
Despite Descartes' repeated references to the pictorial indispensability of colours, the so-called "secondary qualities" (the only genuinely sensible contents of both perceptions and dreams) are strikingly absent from this summation. By "and so on" here, it quickly becomes clear, we are to understand those aspects of "corporeal nature in general" which, like shape, size, number, place, and time, admit of mathematization. As the sixth Meditation confirms, it is precisely here that, epistemically speaking, Descartes intends to come to rest. There he finally concludes that "corporeal things exist", and he continues: They may not all exist in a way that exactly corresponds with my sensory grasp of them, for in many cases the grasp of the senses is very obscure and confused. But at least they possess all the properties which I clearly and distinctly understand, that is, all those which, viewed in general terms, are comprised within the subject-matter of pure mathematics. (AT 80 = CS 55)
And "the fact that I perceive by my senses a great variety of colours, sounds, smells and tastes, as well as differences in heat, hardness and the like" shows only that the bodies which are the source of these various sensory perceptions possess differences corresponding to them, though perhaps not resembling them. (AT 81 =CS 56)
The absence, at either point, of any argunlent to distinguish the epistemic status of colours etc. from that of shapes etc. in point of dubitability merely reflects the fact that, as Berkeley was later to make painfully clear, there is no such distinction to be had: 35
Cartesian Scepticism Phil.
Hyl.
Phil.
Hyl.
Can you ... separate the ideas of extension and motion from the ideas of all those qualities which they who make the distinction term "secondary?" What! Is it not an easy matter to consider extension and motion by themselves, abstracted from all other sensible qualities? Pray how do the mathematicians treat of them? I acknowledge, Hylas, it is not difficult to form general propositions and reasonings about those qualities without mentioning any other, and, in this sense, to consider or treat of them abstractedly. But does it follow that, because I can pronounce the word "motion" by itself, I can form the idea of it in n1Y mind exclusive of body? ... Mathematicians treat of quantity without regarding what other sensible qualities it is attended with ... But when, laying aside the words, they contemplate the bare ideas, I believe you will find they are not the pure abstracted ideas of extension ... Since therefore it is impossible even for the mind to disunite the ideas of extension and motion from all other sensible qualities, does it not follow that where the one exist there necessarily the other exist likewise? It should seem so.25
Nor do the second Meditation's reflections on the piece of wax supply the missing argument. That the persisting wax cannot consist of any configuration of determinate sensible qualities simply does not entail eitl1er the ontological or episten1ic separability of "secondary" sensible contents from mathematicizable "primary" sensibleform. Compare Hume on the "distinction of reason": It is certain that the mind would never have dreamed of distinguishing a figure from the body figured, as being in reality neither distinguishable, nor different, nor separable, did it not observe, that even in this simplicity there might be contained many different resemblances and relations. Thus, when a globe of white marble is presented, we receive only the impression of a white colour disposed in a certain form, nor are we able to separate and distinguish the colour from the form. But observing afterwards a globe of black marble and a cube of white, and comparing then1 with our former object, we find two separate resemblances, in what formerly seemed, and really is, perfectly inseparable. After a little more practice of this kind, we begin to distinguish the figure from the colour by a distinction of reason; that is, we consider the figure and colour together, since they are, in effect, the same and undistinguishable; but still view them in different aspects, according to the resemblances of which they are susceptible. (THNr. i. 7)26 25 George Berkeley, Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous, ed. C. M. Turbayne (Indianapolis, Ind., and New York: Babbs-Merrill, 1954), pp. 34-5. 26 Treatise on Human Nature, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1888). Citation by book, chapter, and section.
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What Descartes' reasoning perhaps does establish is that it is possible to doubt the existence of what he calls "composite things"; that is, corporeal things answering to a given determinate description characteristic for menlbership in a specific natural kind: So a reasonable conclusion from this might be that physics, astronomy, medicine, and all other disciplines which depend upon the study of composite things, are doubtful (AT 20 = CS 14)
In the light of Descartes' broader scientific aims, it may seem odd to find physics 011 this list, but we should remember that the discipline includes an inventory of basic natural kinds (atoms, subatomic particles, quantum wavicles, quarks, or whatever) alongside the purely mathematical kinematics and dynamics of stationary and moving "bodies". Given his prima-facie endorsement of at least a determinable al1alogy between the contents of his sensory beliefs, whether perceptions or dreams, and "things that are real", we would expect Descartes to conclude at this point that the existence of "corporeal nature in general", at least, is epistemically secure, falling outside the scope of even his extended and hyperbolic sense of what is doubtful. What we in fact find, however, points to another lacu.na in the argumentation, for Descartes notoriously concludes instead that arithmetic, geometry and other such subjects of this kind, which deal only with the simplest and most general things, regardless of whether they really exist in nature or not, contain something certain and indubitable. For whether I am awake or asleep, two and three added together are five, and a square has no more than four sides. It seems impossible that such transparent truths should incur any suspicion of being false. (AT 20 = CS 14)
As long as the presupposition of sensory ectype and natural archetype remains in place, however, a generic existential doubtfulness regarding "corporeal nature" remains unfounded. The hyperbolic extension of "reasons for doubt" to nlere possibilities will license the corresponding global negativeexistential pretence only if Descartes can consiste11tly specify the requisite possibility; that is, consistently describe an epistemic circumstance compatible with both his defacto sensory beliefs and the non-existence of any natural analogues to their contents, however remote. The final lllovenlent of the First Meditation is addressed to this task: [Firmly] rooted in my mind is the long-standing opinion that there is an oml~ipotent God who has made me the kind of creature that I am. How do I know that he has not
37
Ca rtesia n Scepticism brought it about that there is no earth, no sky, no extended thing, no shape, no size, no place, while at the same time ensuring that all these things appear to me to exist just as they do now? ... [Some] would prefer to deny the existence of so powerful a God rather than believe that everything else is uncertain. Let us not argue with them . . . According to their supposition, then, I have arrived at illy present state by fate or chance or a continuous chain of events, or by some other means; yet since deception and error seem to be imperfections, the less powerful they make my original cause, the more likely it is that I am so imperfect as to be deceived all the time. (AT 21 =CS 14)
The seas of metaphysics are running especially high in these paragraphs. Whereas Descartes' earlier reasoning focused on specific epistemically problematic circumstances ex hypothesi known sometimes to obtain, his point of departure here is a series of purely speculative hypotheses regarding the possible "original cause" of his "present state". The diverse possibilities, he suggests, fall into two n1utually exclusive and jointly exhaustive groups: Either the "original cause" is all-powerful, "an omnipotent God", or less-than-allpowerful, "fate", "chance", "a continuous chain of events" , or whatever. The argument then proceeds as a constructive dilemma. In either case, Descartes argues, his epistemic circumstances will be compatible with his being "deceived all the time", and so, in particular, with his being mistaken regarding the existence of corporeal nature per see The competences of an all-powerful "original cause" prima facie include bringing it about that Descartes is "deceived all the tin1e"; the com_petences of a less-than-all-powerful "original cause" perhaps do not suffice to preclude such all-encompassing error. The originative hypotheses whose epistemic import Descartes undertakes to assess concern his own existence as, as he puts it, "the kind of creature that I am". They are hypotheses, he writes, regarding how "I have arrived at my present state". But what is his "present state"? What kind of creature is he? The balance of the Meditations, as we know, contains an answer, developed in two stages: In the second Meditation Descartes concludes that he is at least a thinking thing; that is, "a mind, or intelligence, or intellect, or reason" (AT 27 = CS 18). And in the sixth Meditation he argues27 that he is only a thinking thing; that (as he puts it) "nothing else be~ongs to my nature or essence except that I am a thinking thing" (AT 78 = CS 54). But how much of this picture is Descartes entitled to presuppose at the present stage of the dialectic? What is it, so to speak, that a hypothetical"original cause" of his "present state" is supposed to have effected?
27 Invalidly, as it happens-but that is a story I have told elsewhere. (See ch. 3 of The Thinking Self (Philadelphia, Pa.: Temple University Press, 1986).
38
Cartesian Scepticism
Well, this much is clear: Whatever else Descartes may be, he is at least a believer. He is the (believing) subject both of diverse particular spontaneous sensory beliefs, all of which have proved to be (in the broad sense) doubtful, and of the general belief whose epistemic status is here in question, a belief in the existence of "bodies" or "corporeal nature in general". That Descartes is at least a thinking thing, in other words, appears to be a non-controversial presupposition of all the proceedings in his first Meditation. But if this is so, then Descartes will have succeeded in describing a "reason for doubting" the existence of "bodies", i.e. in specifying epistemic circumstances compatible both with his de facto sensory beliefs and the non-existence of any natural analogues to their contents, only if his having such sensory beliefs is itselfconsistent with the non-existence of corporeal nature. 28 And that, in turn, will be true only if Descartes' own existence as a thinking thing is independent of the existence of corporeal things. The doubtfulness of Descartes' belief in the existence of "corporeal nature in general" will be a consequence of the (ostensible) possibility that he is "deceived all the time" 011ly if the existence of corporeal nature is something abollt which he could be deceived; that is, only if it is possible for him to believe mistakenly that there are "bodies". But this will be possible only if the existence of bodies is not a necessary condition of the existence of believers. The central claim of the ontological dualism ultimately defended only in the sixth Meditation, in short, surprisingly appears to be a presupposition of the concluding stage of Descartes'hyperbolic doubt in the first. Various objections to this conclusion are likely to be lodged on Descartes' behalf. It will surely be suggested, for instance, that the cogency of Descartes' reasoning does not presuppose the actual ontological independence of mind and body. The mere possibility that a thinking thing could exist without any corporeal things existing suffices to make room for the req"uisite global existential doubt. But how should we understand this? The concept of ontologically independent substances is already a concept in the mode of possibility: mind and body are actually independent only if it is possible for either to exist without the other existing. 29 Now, by Descartes' lights, truths regarding such possibilities can be known by reason alone, and 28 I here deliberately ignore the peculiar, and arguably incoherent, Cartesian conviction that the competences of an all-powerful God transcend the strictures of logical consistency. 29 Hence, Descartes' Meditations establish no eschatological conclusions. That minds can exist apart from bodies does not imply that they ever do. It is consistent with everything that Descartes claims to have demonstrated that a thinking substance which is not present in its body"as a sailor is present in a ship", but rather "very closely joined and, as it were, intermingled with it" (AT 81 = CS 56), cannot survive the dissolution of so intimate a relationship.
39
Cartesian Scepticism
it is surely plausible to hold that what can be known in this way, by the "true light of reason" , is itself necessary. It follows that if the existence of bodies is a necessary condition of the existence of believers then it is necessarily so. Conversely, then, if it is not necessary that believers exist only if bodies doi.e. if it is possible that the existence of bodies is not a necessary condition of the existence of believers-then the existence of bodies isn't a necessary condition of the existence of believers. In the context of Descartes' modal understandings, in short, there is no difference between an argument's presupposing the actual ontological indepel1dence of mind and body and its "merely" presupposing its possibility. 30 Again, it will be objected that even if the existence of bodies is a necessary condition of the existence of believers, it suffices for Descartes' purposes that he does not know with certainty that it is. Surely it is possible for him to doubt that believers exist only if corporeal things do. But this response mislocates the role of presupposition in question. What is at issue is whether the existence of corporeal nature is something about which Descartes could infact be "deceived"; that is, whether it is possible for him to mistakenly believe that there are bodies. Let us suppose that Descartes himself can doubt that the existence of bodies is a necessary condition of the existence of believers. That is not something I have denied. Indeed, I have not proposed that Descartes himself must have any explicit convictions about the ontological independence of mind and body in the context of the first Meditation. What I have contended is that, in accordance with his own methodological precepts, the doubtfulness of Descartes' belief in the existence of "corporeal nature in general" depends on the possibility of his mistakenly believing that there are bodies, and that this will in fact be possible only if the existence of bodies is not in fact a necessary condition of the existence of believers. Quite independently of what Descartes is entitled to believe regarding the ontological independence of mind and body, in other words, the cogency of his argument at this point in the first Meditation-in particu.1ar, Descartes' ability to satisfy his own methodological imperatives by identifying a "reason for doubting" the proposition that there exists a world of corporeal thil1gs-presupposes such independence. Descartes' (modal) reason for doubting that he is seated by the fire in his dressing-gown is that he could be (merely) dreaming that he is, and that will be so 30 The foregoing argument in a nutshell: Let 'T-)B' represent "Thinkers exist only if Bodies exist". I propose that Descartes is committed to: If T-)B then o(T-)B). Contraposing, we obtain: If "'o(T-)B) then "'(T-)B). By modal equivalences, then, it follows that: If o"'(T-)B) then '"'J(T-)B). But ''''(T-)B)' already expresses the ontological independence of mind and bodies, since it (at least) implies'o(T&'"B)' .
40
Cartesian Scepticism
only if his dreaming that he is seated by the fire in his dressing-gown is consistent with his not being seated by the fire in his dressing-gown. Analogously, Descartes' ostensible (modal) reason for doubting that there exists a world of corporeal things is that he could be deceived in believing that bodies exist, and that will be so only if his believing that bodies exist is consistent with there not being any such corporeal things. But just as his dreaming that he is seated by the fire will be consistent with his not being seated by the fire only if his being seated by the fire is not a necessary condition of his dreaming (that, or anything else)-which is unproblematic-so Descartes' believing that bodies exist will be consistent with the non-existence of corporeal things only if the existence of corporeal things is not a necessary condition of his believing (that, or anything else)-which is ab initio contentious and, indeed, by his own lights, stands in need of a separate demonstration not forthcoming until the sixth Meditation. By the same token, Descartes' famous final heuristic pretence, the demoniac deceiver, also presupposes the ontological il1dependence of mind and body: [I] will suppose . . . some malicious demon of utmost power and cunning has employed all his energies in order to deceive me. I shall think that the sky, the air, the earth, colours, shapes, sounds and all external things are . . . delusions ... which he has devised to ensnare my judgment. I shall consider myself as not having hands or eyes, or flesh, or blood or senses, but as falsely believing that I have all these things. (AT 22-3 = CS 15)
Here, too, the expressed SUpposItIon will describe a possibility only if Descartes' believing anything whatsoever, correctly or mistakenly, is consistent with the non-existence of "all external things" . It is surely an understatement to observe that that is hardly obvious. I began this chapter by recalling that Descartes is widely supposed to have given, in his first Meditation, intuitive and compelling arguments in support of the sceptical view that it is possible to doubt that (we know that) there exists a natural world of objects in space and time. The investigations just concluded, however, hardly support this received vie~ In reconstructing such argumentation as the first Meditation does contain, I have, in fact, charitably tried to avoid some of the most implausible Cartesian commitments. I have, for instance, eschewed the Scholastic residue of "modes of being" and so refrained from reading Descartes as problematically ontologizing appearances, and I have taken a relaxed stance toward such notions as "sure signs" and so refrained from reading Descartes as problematically identifying epistemic warraI1t with 41
Cartesian Scepticism
logical entailment. Even granted such exegetical concessions, however, Descartes' reasoning turned out to rest upon a series of controversial and disputable commitments-the presumptive architectural foundationalism and epistemic individualism of the formalist paradigm, a broad notion of "reasons for doubt" which subsumes mere possibilities, and, perhaps most contentiously of all, the ontological independence of mind and body. It would, I submit, be grotesque to call an argument resting on such contentio·us presuppositions"compelling and intuitive" . It should be noted, however, that this negative conclusion concerns only the claimed possibility of global existential doubt regarding a natural world of objects in space and time. The weaker thesis that the actual nature of those items whose perse existence and constitution account for the specific character of our sensory experience might be radically different from what, in that experience, it appears to be, i.e. the thesis that the natural world n1ight (turn out to) be very different from what we initially and pre-reflectively take it to be, rests on no such contentious presuppositions. But that is not as such a scepticalthesis. It formulates, rather, one species of realism, and, unlike global existential scepticism, that the natural world is, in that sense, real is a Cartesian thesis which, for instance, Kantian transcendental idealists, Peircean pragmatists, and contemporary "scientific realists" can all find perfectly congenial. At this point it may well be objected that, whatever the ultimate verdict regarding the particular arguments advanced in Descartes' works, Cartesian sceptical reasoning perse has an intuitive force that still needs to be addressed. Robert Fogelin, for instance, offers the following account of the typical consequences of making salient a variety of remote defeating possibilities: 31 Normally we ignore these possibilities, but if we dwell on them ... we will find ourselves unwilling to claim to know many things that we usually accept as items of knowledge. Do I, for example, know my own name? This seems to me to be as sure a piece of knowledge as I possess. But perhaps, through a mix-up at the hospital, I an1 a changeling. I'm really Herbert Ortcutt, and the person who is called "Ortcutt" is actually RJF. These things, after all, do happen. Given this possibility, do I know my own name? I'm inclined to say that I do not. Not only that, philosophical natfs, namely those who do not see that such an admission may lead to forlorn skepticism, tend to agree. When pressed in this way, people are likely to become impatient, even angry, yet, under pressure, most will acknowledge that strictly speaking-if you are going to be picky-they do not know their own names. (PR 93-4)
31 In Pyrrhonian Reflections on Knowledge and Justification (PR) (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1994).
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Cartesian Scepticism
Now, although there is a great deal that can be said about this passage,32 it cannot be disputed that consideration of nlere possibilities can and does evoke this sort of response. The philosophical issue, however, is whether it properly should do so, and we have already encountered some reasons for calling that conclusion into question. One can instead consistently and resolutely hold to the principle-independently advocated by C. S. Peirce and G. E. Moore-that knowledge can be undermined only by possibilities which there is some positive reason to suppose actually obtain, in which case the merepos. sibility that I am a "changeling" will carry no epistemological consequences at all. Pressing the sceptical case will then lead only to dialogues like this: Do I know my own name? Sure, it's'Jay Rosenberg'. But have I ever investigated the possibility that I am a changeling? Well, no, but what sort of possibility is "the possibility that I am a changeling" supposed to be? Of course, it's logically possible that I am a changeling. That is, "Jay Rosenberg is a changeling" is not self-contradictory. But so what? I have no reason to suspect that I am a changeling, and, in fact, I'm not one. But do I know that? Well, for one thing, I've got a certified copy of my birth certificate. Ah, but documents can be forged. Indeed they can, but, again, so what? I have no reason to suppose that this document is a forgery. And so on.
A process of making salient mere possibilities can successfuJly undermine knowledge, in short, only if it can establish that some necessary condition for knowledge has not been met, and that is something that still needs to be cogently and convincingly argued. Barry Stroud, for instance, undertakes to secure by an appropriate argument the genuine sceptical import of Descartes' appeal to dreams and dreaming. The role of that appeal, Stroud agrees, is indeed to call attention to a possibility, but the fact that we are explicitly cOllcerned with judgements of the form "S knows that p" confers relevance on the "dream-possibility". The concept of knowledge which we invoke in everyday life, Stroud argues, is such that, for allY case of claimed knowledge, there exist possibilities "such that if they obtained I did not know what I claimed to know, and they had to be known not to obtain in order for the original knowledgeclaim to be true", and Descartes' dream-possibility, he suggests, fulfils both these conditions:
32 For instance, that Fogelin is confused about proper names. On the" changeling" scenario that he envisions, it might be true that his name once was 'Herbert Ortcutt', and that Herbert Ortcutt's name once was 'Robert J. Fogelin', but their subsequent histories have arguably brought it about that, inter alia, the proper names that were assigned to them at birth are not their present proper nan1es. For the relevant arguments see ch. 4 of my Beyond Formalism.
43
Cartesian Scepticism [It] seems undeniable that it fulfils the first. If he were dreaming Descartes would not know what he claims to know ... But does it fulfil the second condition? Is it a possibility which must be known not to obtain if Descartes is to know that he is sitting by the fire with a piece of paper in his hand? I think it is difficult simply to deny that it is. . . . The idea is that the two conditions ... are not really separate after alL As soon as we see that a certain possibility is incompatible with our knowing such-and-such, it is suggested, we immediately recognize that it is a possibility that must be known not to obtain if we are to know the such-and-such in question. (SPS 26-7)
Thus, even though it is not plausible to require that we know the falsehood of everything incompatible with our knowing what we claim to know, Stroud concludes, it seems plausible to hold the weaker requirement that "if somebody knows something, p, he must know the falsity of all those things incompatible with his knowing that p (or perhaps all those things he knows to be incompatible with his knowing that p)" (SPS 28-9). As they stand, this conclusion and the reasoning leading up to it need to be tidied, stabilized, and refined in a number of ways. One potential confusion-one that Stroud himself is later at pains to highlight-is between the conditions in which it is in order to claim to know something (to assert that one knows) and the conditions in which it is true that one knows that thing. Stroud concedes that "if we insist on ... a realistic account of how we actually behave there seems little doubt that we do not in fact impose that general condition on knowledge-claims" (SPS 49; my emphasis). 33 But it does not follow from this concession that being able to eliminate the dream-possibility is not among the conditions of knovv'ledge per se. And in fact Stroud evidently thinks that it is easy to explain why a principle that correctly formulates one of the conditions for the truth of a knowledge-claim is neglected in mundane contexts of assertion: [We] are ... strongly inclined to reject the sceptical reasoning because what it would require of us deviates so radically from what we require ... in everyday life. The sceptical philosopher has an explanation of that difference. There is a single conception of knowledge at work both in everyday life and in the philosophical investigation of human knowledge, but that conception operates in everyday life under the constraints of social practice and the exigencies of action, co-operation and communication. The
33 Fogelin concurs: "In our common use of knowledge claims-including serious uses of knowledge claims-our assertions are not responsive to every possibility that might refute them. We are willing to make knowledge claims while recognizing that sometimes odd things come up that lead us to withdraw them" (PR 79). Or again: "When people claim to know things, they do not do so in the belief that they have eliminated all eliminable refuting possibilities, nor do their auditors suppose that they believe this" (PR 95).
44
Cartesian Scepticism practical social purposes served by our assertions and claims to know things in everyday life explain why we are normally satisfied with less than what, with detachment, we can be brought to acknowledge are the full conditions of knowledge. (SPS 71)
This is a suggestive passage and one which gives rise to a variety of interesting issues. Just what "social practice", for instance, constrains our mundane knowledge-claims, and just how do such constraints operate? What does Stroud mean by 'detachment', and what are "the full conditions of la.10wledge"? These are all excellent questions, but, for the time being, at least, I shall simply note them and pass on. Second, we must distinguish possibilities incompatible with what is ostensibly known from possibilities incompatible with the knowing of it. In a recent essay entitled "The Structure of the Skeptical Argument,,34 Anthony Brueckner undertakes to determine what "epistemic principles" are required by "what has become the canonical Cartesian skeptical argument" ("SSA" 827). The linchpin of the family of sceptical reasonings considered by Brueckner is an epistemic closure principle, the principle that knowledge is closed under known entailn1ents; that is (letting the arrow represent entailment): (CP)
For all S, <1>, \If, if S knows that
Given an arbitrary matter-of-factual proposition, p, a sceptical counterpossibility to p is a non-contradictory proposition, s, known to be incompatible with p. A typical sceptical argument then proceeds along the following lines ("SSA" 827): (1)
If I know that p then I know that "'s.
(2)
I do not know that "'s.
.. (3)
I do not know that p.
where, given that it is known that s is incompatible with p, i.e. that p~--s, (1) is supported by subsidiary reasoning appealing to the closure principle (CP). As Brueckner himself points out, however ("SSA" 828 n. 1), the notion of sceptical counter possibilities operative in Stroud's reasoning is slightly different. In Stroud's sense, a sceptical counter possibility to p is a non-contradictory proposition () that is known to be incon1patible not with p but rather
34 Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 54/4 (1994), pp. 827-35. Cited henceforth, with occasional slight notational alterations in the interest of expository consistency, as '.'SS.N'.
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Cartesian Scepticism
with one:S- knowing that p. His specific reliance on Descartes' "dream-possibility" explains the difference. Recalling G. E. Moore's story of a Duke of Devonshire "who . . . once dreamt he was speaking in the House of Lords and woke up to find that he was speaking in the House of Lords" (SPS 14), Stroud concludes that "if ... Descartes must know that he is not dreaming if he is to know that he is sitting by the fire, it cannot be simply because the possibility in question is known to be incompatible with what he claims to know. It is not" (SPS 29). The dream-possibility is not known to be incompatible with Descartes' sitting by the fire, that is, because it is not incompatible with Descartes' sitting by the fire. This is simply the point, stressed earlier, that the Cartesian distinction between wakeful perceiving and dreaming is independent of that between truth and error. Lying asleep in bed, I can dream, truly, that I am lying in bed, asleep and dreaming. Stroud consequently appeals not to the principle, implicit in Brueckner's formulation, that we must know the falsity of all the things (that we know to be) incompatible with the things we know, but to the more complicated principle that we must know the falsity of all the things (that we know to be) incompatible with our knolving what we know. If Brueckner's schematic canonical argument draws on the closure principle (CP) for the support of its first premise, then the first premise of the analogous reasoning invoked by Stroud is supported by implicit reasoning which evidently draws on a different "closure principle": (CS)
For all S, <1>, \fI, if S knows that
Instantiating \If to the specific"dream"-counterpossibility then gives us the following first approximation to Stroud's reconstruction of Descartes' sceptical reasoning: (1 s)
If I know that p then I know that I am not dreaming that p.
(2s)
I do not know that I am not dreaming that p.
.. (3s)
I do not know that p.
Brueckner's implicit commitment to the simpler principle (CP), in contrast, is perhaps conditioned by his choice of a quite different paradigmatic counter possibility; namely, "the proposition that I am a brain in a vat with sense experience qualitatively indistinguishable from my actual experience" ("SS~' 827). Let us first consider (CS). On the present reconstruction of Stroud's reasoning, my entitlement to (1 s) rests on (CS) in a manner analogous to the way 46
Cartesian Scepticism
in which Brueckner's (1) is supposed to rest on the closure principle (CP). In the background of the argument schematized above, in other words, there lies another: (s.a)
If I know that p and I know that (I know that p ~ I am not dreaming that p), then I know that I am not dreaming that p.
(s.b)
I know that (I know that p ~ I am not dreaming that p).
From (CS)
Premise (Is)
If I know that p, then I know that I am not dreaming that p. (s.a),(s.b)
It remains to ask, however, what, if anything, entitles me to the minor premise of this argument; that is, to (s.b). We have seen that Stroud concedes that the drean1-possibility is not incompatible with the truth of what is ostensibly known. That a person is dreaming that, for example, he is seated by the fire in his dressing-gown does not entail that he is not. Stroud asserts, in contrast, that the dreampossibility is incompatible with one's knowing what is ostensibly known; that is, that a person knows that he is seated by the fire in his dressing-gown does entail that he is not dreaming that he is. But is there really a significant difference here? Of course, if a person is not seated by the fire in his dressing-gown, then that fact alone implies that he does not know that he is. 'Know' belongs to a large family of "veridical" verbs-'discover', 'determine', 'confirm', 'see', 'prove', etc.-which imply the truth of theirpropositional complen1ents. 35 And it therefore follows that someone who is merely dreaming that he is seated by the fire in his dressing-gown also does not know that he is; for, a person who is merely dreaming that he is in certain circumstances is ipso facto not in those circumstances. In general, to be merely dreaming that p is just to be dreaming that p when it is not the case that p. But the present question is whether the simpler proposition that a person is dreaming that he is seated by the fire in his dressing-gown, by itself, entails that he does not know that he is, and it is not obvious that it does. It is instructive to see how Stroud attempts to support his contrary conviction: 35 I write 'propositional complements', since many or most of these verbs take other sorts as well: "know Bill Clinton", "know how to ride a bicycle", "discover the Lesser Antilles", "determine the specific gravity of Emmental cheese", "confirm your room reservation", "see a duck", "see the point of your objection", "prove to be a difficult nut to crack". The notion of truth is perhaps arguably involved in all these constructions as well, but less directly and obviously so.
47
Cartesian Scepticism [It] certainly seems right to say that if Descartes were dreaming that he is sitting by the fire with a piece of paper in his hand he would not then know that he is ... When you dream that something is going on in the world around you you do not thereby know that it is. Most often, of course, what we dream is not even true But even if what you are dreaming is in fact so you do not thereby know that it is So [Descartes] relies on what seems to be an undeniable fact about dreams: if you are dreaming that something is so you do not thereby know that it is so. (SPS 14-15)
What should catch our attention at this point are the repeated occurrences in this passage of the word 'thereby'. The principle which is here under consideration, in other words, is plainly that, whether or not it is true that p, a person who is dreaming that p does not thereby know that p. Dreaming that something is the case, in short, is not a way of coming to know that it is the case. And that, of course, is indisputably correct. 36 But it does not follow from the correctness of this principle that dreaming that p is incompatible with blowing that p. N ow, Stroud himself concedes that there at least appears to be a sense in which there is no incompatibility between dreaming and knowing. A physicist, for instance, who knows a great deal about the way things are might also dream that things are that way, in which case "he can ... be said to be dreaming that [certain things are] so and also to know that [they are] so", although it would remain true that "in dreaming them he did not thereby know them to be so" (SPS 16). But Stroud goes on to insist that this prima-facie concession represents only a too hasty discoullting of the force of Descartes' reasoning. If Descartes' reasoning is correct the dreaming physicist, even when he is awake, does not really know any of the things we were uncritically crediting him with knowing about the way things are-or at least he does not know them on the basis of the senses. In order to know them on the basis of the senses there would have to have been at least some time at which he knew something about what was going on around him at that time. But if Descartes is right he could not have known any such thing unless he had established that he was not dreaming at that time; and according to Descartes he could never establish that. So the fact about dreams that Descartes relies on-that one who dreams that something is so does not thereby know that it is so-is enough to yield his conclusion if the other steps of his reasoning are correct. (SPS 16-17)
Earlier, I examined Descartes' actual reasoning in detail, and in fact found it wanting in a variety of ways. But what is at issue now is not Descartes' own 36 Well, at least indisputably correct in our culture, as it were, sub specie scientia. If the question were raised in another cultural context-for instance, that of a Native American tribal shaman or the Senoi people of the Malayan peninsula-it might elicit a quite different answer (see e.g. Kilton Stewart, "Dream Theory in Malaya" , in Charles T. Tart (ed.), Altered States of Consciousness (Garden City, NY: Doubleday (Anchor Books), 1972), pp. 161-70).
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Cartesian Scepticism
sceptical argument but rather Cartesian sceptical arguments. In particular, we are presently trying to discern the principles upon which Strouds reconstruction of Descartes' sceptical reasoning rests and to evaluate the arguments that he offers in support of those principles-and with respect to this enterprise Stroud's demurral at this point is dialectically beside the point. "If Descartes is right," Stroud writes, our hypothetical physicist "could not have known [what was going on around him at some time] unless he had established that he was not dreaming at that time". But what is in question at this point in the dialectic is precisely whether Descartes is right, i.e. wh.ether there is in fact any incompatibility between dreaming and knowing, and acknowledging "the fact about dreams that Descartes relies on", namely that dreaming that p is not a way of coming to know that p, does not suffice to establish such an incompatibility. In fact, the crucial 'thereby' seems progressively to simply vanish from Stroud's reasoning. Thus we find such passages as this: Is it really a condition of knowing something about the world that one know one is not dreaming? ... In asking [this question] I do not mean to be going back on something I said earlier was undeniably true, viz., that if one is dreaming that something about the world is so one does not thereby know that it is so. This still seems to me undeniable, but it is not the same as Descartes's assumption that one must know that one is not dreaming if one is to know something about the world. The undeniable truth says only that you lack knowledge if you are dreaming; Descartes says that you lack knowledge if you don't lmow that you are not dreaming. a,nly with the stronger assumption can his sceptical conclusion be reached. (SPS 23-4)
Stroud proceeds to argue in favour of the stronger assumption on the grounds that it "seems like nothing more than an instance of a familiar commonplace about knowledge" . We are all aware that, even in the most ordinary circumstances ... we cannot know a particular thing unless we have ruled out certain possibilities that we recognize are incompatible with our knowing that thing. (SPS 24)
But this principle-it is in essence a version of Stroud's "closure principle" (CS)-applies only to those "certain possibilities" which are (known to be) incompatible with our knowing what we supposedly do, and the question presently before us is precisely whether the possibility that one is dreaming is among those possibilities. Despite Stroud's rhetoric of "undeniable truth", we have not yet seen any reason to suppose that it is. For, notice the vanishing 'thereby'. The "undeniable truth" that "if one is dreaming that something about the world is so one does not thereby know that it is so" is simply ,not 49
Cartesian Scepticism
identical to the alleged "undeniable truth" that "you lack knowledge if you are drean1ing", yet Stroud strikes precisely this spurious equation in the passage just cited. Stroud comes closest to recognizing the argumentative lacuna that I have been stressing when he draws a contrast between two ways in which acknowledging a possibility might challenge a presumptive case of knowledge. One way is illustrated by the relationship between Illy ostensible knowledge that there is a goldfinch in the garden and the possibility that the bird in the garden is a canary; the other, by the relationship between my ostensible knowledge that my bed is covered with a huge pile of leaves and the possibility that I am hallucinating the bed and the leaves. In the first case, "what is said to be possible is something incompatible with the truth of what I [ostensibly] know". The secol1d example, however, is intended to illustrate that" a possible deficiency in the basis of my belief can interfere with my knowledge without itself rendering false the very thing I believe" (SPS25): [However] improbable it might be that my bed is actually covered with leaves, its not being covered with leaves does not follow from the fact that I am hallucinating that it is. What I am hallucinating· could nevertheless be ... true. But a goldfinch simply could not be a canary. So although there are two different ways in which a certain possibility can threaten my knowledge, it remains true that there are always certain possibilities which must be known not to obtain if I am to know what I claim to know. (SPS26)
Once again, however, we must ask whether my hallucinating that my bed is covered with leaves is actually incompatible with my knowing that it is. That the bird in the garden is a canary plainly is incompatible with my knowing that it is a goldfinch, precisely for the reason that it is incompatible with the bird's being a goldfinch whereas 'know' is veridical. But since my hallucil1ating that my bed is covered with leaves is compatible with its being covered with leaves, the claim that I do not know that it is cannot be established in this way by appealing to the mediating conclusion that it is not. Stroud thus needs an independel1t argument for the claim that my hallucinating that my bed is covered with leaves entails that I do not know that it is, and this argull1ent is simply not forthcoming. What. we inter alia find instead is, rather, another crucial modifier: A hallucinogenic drug might cause me to see my bed covered with a huge pile of leaves ... Having taken that drug; I will know the actual state of my bed only if I know that what I see is not just the effect of the drug; I must be able to rule out the possibility that I am hallucinating the bed and the leaves. (SPS 25; my emphasis)
50
Cartesian Scepticism
N ow, it is arguably true that I do not know that my bed is covered with leaves if I amjust hallucinating that it is. Like "merely dreaming", "just hallucinating" (as well as "only hallucinating") carries the specific implication of non-veridicality. And it is also correct to observe that, whether or not my bed is in fact covered with leaves, hallucinating that it is covered with leaves is not a way of coming to know that it is. This observation-another "not thereby" claim, so to speak-is presumably what Stroud has in mind, but it is worth noticing that what he in fact says is simply false. For, suppose that I have taken the hallucinatory drug, know that I have taken it, and furthermore know that what I (seem to) see is "just the effect of the drug". Then I nevertheless can know "the actual state of my bed"; for, it is consistent with all of these assumptions that I know independently, for instance, that my bed is not covered with leaves. I conclude, then, that Stroud has provided no reason to believe that someone's dreaming that p is incompatible with his knowing that p; that is, that knowing entails not drean1ing. It follows that we have no sufficient reason to accept (s.b) (= "I know that (I know that p ~ I am not dreaming that p.)"), and thus no sufficient reason to accept the major premise of Stroud's Cartesian sceptical argument, (1 s) (= "If I know that p then I know that I am not dreaming that p.") whether or not we accept Stroud's closure principle: (CS)
For all S, <j), \jf, if S knows that
We remain free, that is, both to grant Stroud's claim that we know something about the world only if we know the falsity of all the things that we know to be incompatible with our knowing what we know, and to acknowledge the standing possibility of dreams and hallucinations without thereby being committed to any sceptical cOl1clusions. What about other, more radical sceptical counter possibilities; for example, the popular contemporary "virtual-reality" hypothesis, rehearsed by Brueckner, "that I am a brain in a vat with sense experience qualitatively indistinguishable from my actual experience" ("SSA" 827)7 Like the hypotheses that I am merely dreaming or just hallucil1ating, this scenario is specifically designed to entail not only the falsity of my knowing, for instance, that I am seated beside a fireplace wearing n1Y dressing gown, but also the falsity of what it is that I ostensibly know. The simpler hypothesis that I am a brain in a vat (full stop), that is, entails that I am not seated beside a fireplace wearing my dressinggown and so, afortiori, that I do not know that I am. If the sceptic is arguing "canonically" from the more commonly invoked closure principle, (CP): 51
Cartesian Scepticism
(CP)
For all S, ~, \If, if S knows that
(~~\If),
in other words, the simpler hypothesis will do. The role of (CP), on Brueckner's account, is to support the major premise of a "canonical" sceptical argument. In the present instance, for example, this canonical form instantiates to: (la)
If I know that I am seated by a fireplace [SF] then I know that I am not a brain in a vat [--BV] .
(2a)
I do not know that --BV
. . (3a)
I do not know that SF.
where, ex hypothesi, the first premise (IA), in turn, rests on the argument (a.a)
If I know that SF and I know that (SF --7 -- BV), then I know that --BV
(a.b)
I know that (SF ~ --BV)
(la)
If I know that SF then I know that --BV
From (CP) Premise (a.a),(a.b)
Unlike Stroud's version of the corresponding supporting argument that we explored above, this secondary argument appears to be sound. On the face of it, that I am seated by a fireplace does indeed entail that I am not a brain in a vat, and so, unlike (s.b) earlier, (a.b) here seems to be entirely in order. If we are provisionally accepting the closure prillciple (CP), then, we can also accept the sceptical argument's conditional premise (Ia). If I know that I am seated by a fireplace then I know that I am not a brain in a vat. Our critical attention thus becomes focused on the argument's second premise, (2a). Is it true that I do not know that I am not a brain in a vat? Well, one possible response to this question is surely to remark that one person's modus tollens is another's modus ponens. Having granted the conditional premise (Ia), that is, it is equally valid to reason from the further premise that I do know that I am seated by a fireplace (= "'(3a) ) to the conclusion that I do know that I am not a brain in a vat (= ""'(2a)). That this reciprocity infects the sceptic's reasoning was already noted by G. E. Moore in connection with the dream-possibility: I agree, therefore, with that part of this argument which asserts that if I don't know that I'm not dreaming, it follows that I don't know that I am standing up ... But this first part of the argument is a consideration which cuts both ways. For, if it is true, it follows that it is also true that if I do know that I am standing up, then I do know that I am not dreaming ... The one argument is just as good as the other, unless my
52
Cartesian Scepticism
opponent can give better reasons for asserting that I don't know that I'm not dreaming, than I can give for asserting that I do know that I am standing Up.37
Later, we will have occasion to explore Moore's responses to philosophical scepticism in detail. What needs to be said at this point is that in the passage just cited Moore makes two methodological claims, only one of which I have so far endorsed. I am in agreement that merely to describe a possibility incompatible with what it is about the world that I ostensibly know does not suffice to establish the sceptical conclusion that I do not in fact know it. A would-be sceptic at least owes me a further argument il1 support of the requisite additional premise that I do not know that sceptical counter possibility not to obtain. What is more problematic, however, is Moore's suggestion that the dialectic here demands a comparison of the strength of two arguments-the missing piece of the sceptic's reasoning, on the one hand, and, on the other, an argument in the course of which I would offer "reasons ... for asserting that I do know" what I ostensibly do. This, I think, is a mistake on two counts, both of which are important for a proper assessment of the cogency and strength of the sceptic's reasoning. The first is a failure to respect the distinction, stressed as we have seen by Stroud, betweel1 the conditions under which I do know, for instance, that I am seated by a fireplace and the conditions under which I am epistemically entitled to assert that I know this. The sceptical argument at issue here is addressed to the matter of my knowledge perse, not to any presumed claim to know. The would-be sceptic presently under consideration, that is, has undertaken to argue, not that I am never warranted or justified in asserting that I know something about the world, but that I never do know anything about the world. But even if, implausibly, it were actually the case that I am never epistemically entitled to assert that I know, for instance, that I am seated by a fireplace, it would still not follow that I never do know that I am seated by a fireplace. The second mistake is subtler. It consists in the implicit suggestion that there is, so to speak, dialectical parity between my defacto epistemic status and the sceptic's challenge. On this view, although the sceptic must indeed produce an argument for the conclusion that I do not know that I am not a brain in a vat, I am correlatively dialectically responsible for an argument in support of the conclusion that I do k110W that I am seated by the fire. But this is not correct. The possibility that I know that I am seated by a fireplace is not in 37 From "Certainty" (HC"), repro in G. E. Moore, Philosophical Papers (PP) (New York: Humanities Press, 1977), pp. 227-5.
53
Cartesian Scepticism
question until it has successfully been called into question, and the success of the Cartesian sceptic's ("canonical") argument to that end is precisely what is here at issue. 38 This is simply an echo of the point, made earlier in connection with Descartes' original argument, that spontaneous sensory beliefs are not per se intrinsically dubious. In the absence of a compelling sceptical argument, that is, there is no reason even to suspect, much less to suppose, that I do not know that I am seated by a fireplace, and so no dialectical necessity for me, or for anyone, to produce an argument in support of the proposition that I do kno~ The burden is on the would-be sceptic, then, to produce an independentand non-question-begging-argument for the crucial mediating premise (2a) of his "canonical" sceptical reasoning; that is, in this instance, to cite good and sufficient reasons to believe that I do not know that I am not a brain in a vat. It is not at all clear what such reasons could be. At this point, our sceptic may well object that I have deliberately ignored the relevant aspect of his hypothetical scenario; for, the possibility that he has proposed is not simply that I am a brain in a vat, but rather that I am a brain in a vat "with sense experience qualitatively indistinguishable from my actual experience". And if I were such a brain in a vat, he might continue, then, not only would I not know that I am seated by a fireplace-since I would not be seated by a fireplace-I would also not know that I was a brain in a vat-since, given n1Y qualitatively indistinguishable sense experience, I would surely believe, falsely, what I now believe; namely, that I am seated by a fireplace. N ow, it is not at all obvious that this is correct. I am rather inclined to the view that there is no principled way to determine a priori what I would believe if I were a brain in a vat. But we can at least observe that whether I would, if I were a brain in a vat, know that I was and, correlatively, whether I would falsely believe, for instance, that I was seated by a fireplace, plainly depends upon what else I would know and believe in those peculiar circumstances. It is entirely consistent with the sceptic's hypothesis, for example, that I know that I an1 a brain in a vat because, inter alia, I correctly remember having consented to become one, and that, in consequence, I also correctly believe that none of my (ostensibly) sensory experiences is veridical. "How interesting;" I might think, "now they're making it seemjust as if I were seated by a fireplace. I wonderwhy."39 38 When he is properly paying attention to dialectical matters, Moore of course knows this very well. It is in fact a keystone of his"defence of common sense" . But, alas, as here, even Moore sometimes loses his dialectical place. 39 Brueckner makes a similar point regarding the minor premise of a "closure" argument in connection with Nozick's "counterfactual-tracking" analysis of knowledge in the latter's Philosophical Explanations (Cambridge, Mass. and Oxford: Harvard University Press, 1981).
54
Cartesian Scepticism
But suppose we concede that if I were such a brain in a vat then I would not know that I was, and even that I would then believe falsely that I was seated by a fireplace. It is still difficult to see how this concession is relevant to the present question. For, what the sceptic needs, to complete his "canonical" argument, are reasons which support his conviction that I do not infact know that I am not a brain in a vat, and the proposition that I would not know that if it 1iVere the case, even if correct, does not by itself imply that I do not know that it is not the case. But since my present sensory experiences, namely those characteristic of someone seated beside a fireplace, are ex hypothesi compatible with my being a brain in a vat having just those sensory experiences (and, indeed, necessarily so), is it not simply obvious that I do not know that I am not such a brain in a vat? I cannot see that it is. What is perhaps obvious is that if all I know is how things here and now appear, then I do not know that I am not such a brain in a vat. But, again, why should I concede that all I know is how things here and now appear? On the face of it, I know many things which imply that I am not a brain in a vat having the sensory experiences characteristic of someone seated beside a fireplace-both mundane things, e.g. that I ate breakfast in the kitchen a few hours ago, and sophisticated things, e.g. that we have not yet developed sufficiently advanced technology even for sustaining the biological functions of a human brain in vitro, much less for controlling a person's sensory experiences. Now, the sceptic will also insist, of course, that I don't know any of these other things, but I submit that we have so far been offered no sufficient reason to conclude that this is so. Once again, the sceptic has lost track of the dialectic. For, what was supposed to show that I can't know such mundane and sophisticated things was precisely to be the sceptic's ostensibly intuitive and compelling argument for the conclusion that I can't even know that I'm sitting beside a fireplace. And I am in fact prepared to grant that if I can't even know that I'm sitting beside a fireplace, then I also can't know the many mundane and sophisticated things which imply that I'm not a brain in a vat. But it is plainly question begging simply to assume that I cannot know those mundane and sophisticated things in an argument intended to demonstrate, by establishing that I cannot know that I am not a brain in a vat, that I cannot even know that I am sitting beside a fireplace. At this juncture, the exasperated sceptic may well accuse me of missing the point. The point, he may continue, is that I am not able to rule out the possibility that I am a brain in a vat having the sensory experiences characteristic of someone sitting beside a fireplace. That is why his hypothesis includes the 55
Ca rtesia n Scepticism
assumption of sensory indistinguishability, to guarantee that I cannot rule it out. But if I am not able to rule out the possibility that I am a brain in a vat, then it cannot be the case that I know that I am not. N ow, this protest perhaps sounds very convincing, but I want to suggest that, if it does, that is largely because we have no clear conception of what most of it Ineans. On the face of it, we are being offered a new general epistemic principle: (KR)
If S knows that p, then S is able to rule out the possibility that '''p.
What are we to make of it? There are, of course, ways of interpreting this new principle that render it trivial. Suppose, for instance, that we understand" S is able to rule out the possibility that
" will need to be compatible with "S does not know that ""'": Either S knows something, \jI, that infactentails that ""'\jI, or S knows something, say p, which entails that it is reasonablefor S to believe that "". Let us first consider the latter option. Suppose, in other words, that what our protesting sceptic has in mind is: 56
Cartesian Scepticism (R2)
S is able to rule out the possibility that == (:3p) [S knows that p .&. (p ~ It is reasonable for S to believe that ""'
Then, on this account, the mediating premise (2a) of the "canonical" argument, namely, that I do not know that I am not a brain in a vat having the sensory experiences characteristic of someone sitting beside a fireplace (= ~ BV), will be supported by an argument of the form: (r2.a)
If I know that ""' B~ then I am able to rule out the possibility that B~ that is:
From(KR)
(r2.b)
If I know that ""' B~ then (:3q) [I know that q .&. (q ~ It is reasonable for me to believe that""'BV) ]
(r2.a),(R2)
(r2.c)
""'(:3q) [I know that q .&. (q ~ It is reasonable for me to believe""'BY) ]
(2a)
I do not know that""'BV
Premise
(r2.b),(r2.c)
The problem with this line of argument, of course, is that there is no reason whatsoever to accept the sceptic's pren1ise (r2.c). On the face of it, I know many things which make it reasonable for me to believe that I am not a brain in a vat having the sensory experiences characteristic of someone sitting beside a fireplace-for example, all those various mundane and sophisticated things mentioned earlier that actually imply that I am not a brain in a vat. More significantly, however, the one thing which even the sceptic is prepared to concede that I do know, namely that I am having sensory experiences characteristic of someone sitting by a fireplace, itself makes it reasonable for me to believe that I an1 not a brain in a vat having such sensory experiences. For, in the absence of independent positive grounds for questionil1g the veridicality of my sensory experience-i.e. specific reasons to suspect either that my present perceptual circumstances are abnormal or that I n1yself am not a normal, and so reliable, perceiver-what the fact that my experiences are those characteristic of someone seated by a fireplace implies that it is reasonable for me to believe is surely that I am seated by afireplace, and if it is reasonable for me to believe this, then it is not reasonable for me to believe that I am any sort of brain in a vat. 40 If the sceptic is to have any chance of being able to non-question-beggingly support his conviction that I do not know that I am not a brain in a vat by an
40 My colleague Bill Lycan has recommended a more modest, because not meta-epistemic, reading of "rule out"; namely, (RO): S is able to rule out the possibility that
57
Cartesian Scepticism
argument appealing to the claim that I cannot rule out the possibility that I am, then, he will apparently need to endorse the remaining alternative reading of that phrase. Suppose finally, then, that what our protesting sceptic has in mind is the first of our two candidate interpretations; that is, that he endorses the equivalence: (RI)
S is able to rule out the possibility that == (:3\11) [S knows that \II .&. (\II ~ "'<1»].
In this case, the reasoning in support of the key premise, (2a), of the original "canonical" sceptical argument will presumably run: (r 1. a)
If I know that --- B~ then I am able to rule out the possibility that BV; that is:
From(KR)
(rl.b)
If I know that ---BV, then «q) [I know that q .&. (q ~ --BV)]
(rl.a),(RI)
(rl.c)
"'(:3q) [I know that q .&. (q ~ ---BV) ]
(2a)
I do not know that'"BY
Premise (rl.b),(rl.c)
This sceptic, however, has in effect simply abandoned the strategy of basing his sceptical case on such general epistemic principles as (CP) and (KR); for, given (rl.c), there is no longer any reason to make an inferential stop even at the intermediate conclusion that I do not know that I am a brain in a vat. This sceptic, that is, can argue directly for (3a): (rl.c)
---(:3q) [Iknowthatq .&. (q ~ ---BV)]
(rl.cl)
('\I q) [If (q ~ ---BV) then I do not know that q].
(rl.c2)
If (SF ~ ---BV) then I do not know that SF.
(rl.d)
SF~---BV
(3a)
I do not know that SF.
Premise (rl.c) (rl.cl) Premise (rl.c2),(rl.d)
A sceptic who proposes to interpret "S is able to rule out the possibility that p" according to (RI), as "(::Jq)[S knows that q & (q ~ ~p)]", in other words, has entirely dispensed with his original appeal to general epistemic principles. His sceptical argument is simple and straightforward: Nothing that I know in1plies that I am not a brain in a vat; that I am seated by a fireplace implies that I am not a brain in a vat; ergo, I do not know that I am seated by a fireplace. But we have been here before-and nothing has happened to change the dialectical situation. On the face of it, I still know many things which imply, 58
Cartesian Scepticism
both severally and together, that I am not a brain in a vat having the sensory experiences characteristic of someone sitting beside a fireplace. And one person's modus tollens is still another's modus ponens. It is equally valid to reason from the premise that I do know that I am seated by a fireplace (= ~(3a)) to the conclusion that I do know something which implies that I am not a brain in a vat (= ~(rl.c)). Just as we earlier needed to see an indepen.dent reason to accept the sceptic's premise that I do 110t know that I am a brain in a vat, we now need to see an independent reason to accept the sceptic's new premise that nothing that I do know implies that I am not a brain in a vat. For the reasons which I have now several times reviewed, I do not think that such an argument is likely to be forthcoming. Let us take stock. The most recent discussion has beel1 centred on various interpretations of the sceptic's clain1 that I do not know that I am not a brain in a vat because I cannot rule out the possibility that I am. On each of these interpretations, I argued, the claim that I cannot rule out the possibility that I am a brain in a vat proves to be either false or question begging, and so on none of them does it independently support the sceptic's conclusion that I do not know that I am not a brain in a vat. In general, I have argued, a would-be "canonical" Cartesian sceptic's entitlement to the proposition that I do not know that I am not a brain in a vat (having sensory experiences characteristic of someone seated by a fireplace) presupposes the availability of an intuitive and compelling sceptical argument for the conclusion that I cannot know even so sin1ple and n1undane a fact as that I am sitting beside a fireplace, and so cannot non-question-beggingly figure as a premise in such an argument. I conclude, then, that, just as Stroud could not satisfactorily complete a sceptical argument departil1g from his closure principle (CS), our present "canonical" Cartesian sceptic cannot satisfactorily complete a sceptical argument departing from the more common closure principle (CP). We thus again remain free to accept the closure principle itself; that is, to grant that knowledge is closed under known entailments. Our examination of canonical Cartesian sceptical arguments, in short, has brought 'us no closer to a natural, intuitive, and compelling case for scepticism than did Descartes' original sceptical reflections. The conviction that Cartesian scepticism is forced on us by our ordinary ways of thinking about knowledge, justification, and truth, and so "irresistibly" commands our rational assent, thus turns out to be, at best, only a popular epistemological myth.
59
The Myth of Cartesian Certainty: Epoche and Inner Sense
2
Doubt is not a pleasant condition but certainty is an absurd one. Voltaire, letter to Frederick the Great, 1767
As we observed in the preceding. chapter, Descartes' notion of doubtfulness is correlative to a notion of indubitability or certainty, conceived as an intrinsic epistemic feature of particular propositions. The idea that there is a class of "incorrigible" true propositions somehow insulated against the possibility of error or false belief is a familiar component of traditional "foundationalist" epistemologies, as is the more specific suggestion that such "incorrigibility" is characteristic of and limited to subject matters that are "mental" , what Descartes calls cogitationes. In the present chapter I want to make both the idea and the suggestion more precise, and then to critically examine what, if anything, can plausibly be said on their behalf. The notions which concern us are clearly operative in a well-known passage from the second Meditation which we have already had occasion briefly to examine: Lastly, it is also the same'!' who has sensory perceptions, or is aware of bodily things as it were through the senses. For example, I am now seeing light, hearing a noise, feelingheat. But [it is possible that] I am asleep, so [I can suppose] all this is false. YetI certainly seem to see, to hear, and to be warmed. This cannot be false; what is called 'having a sensory perception' (sentire) is just this, and in this restricted sense of the term it is simply thinking. (AT 29 = CS 19)
Anton Friedrich Koch glosses the passage this way:
Cartesian Certainty In every judgment we express an objective truth claim and, in doing so, we also claim that the state of affairs we claim to obtain, obtains independently of our act of judgn1ent. Thereby we provide for the possibility of an error on our part. Fallibility is not a human weakness, but the price and shadow of objectivity. Knowing what it means to express objective truth claims, we also know that we are fallible, i.e., we acknowledge that things may be different from what we think them to be. But then we also know what it means to suspend judgen1ent in sceptical epoche and to retreat from an objective truth claim. To suspend one's judgment, however, does not mean to lose consciousness. On the contrary, the suspending of judgment is itself a cognitive act of some sort and still a case of consciousness or thinking. It is the act of retreating to the sheer cogito or to Kant's accompanying 'I think'. ("LW" 74)1
The suspension of judgement or epoche that Koch has in mind ostensibly takes place in Descartes' transition from "I am now seeing light, hearing a noise, feeling heat" to "I certainly seem to see, to hear, and to be warmed" . Koch's leading thesis is that to suspend judgement in this way is in some sense to move from objectivity to subjectivity, to the "I think" of Descartes' Cogito, ergo sum or - equivalently, he suggests - to the "I think" of Kant's"original synthetic unity of apperception" in §16 of the Transcendental Deduction in B: The I think must be capable of accompanying all my presentations. For otherwise something would be presented to me that could not be thought at all-which is equivalent to saying that the presentation either would be impossible, or at least would be nothing to me ... I call it original apperception; for it is the self-consciousness which, because it produces the presentation I think that must be capable of accon1panying all other presentations and [because it] is one and the same in all consciousness, cannot be accompanied by any further presentation. (B 132)2
Both the passage from Descartes' Meditations and the passage from Kant's Critique ofPure Reason are excruciatingly familiar and historically surrounded by vast clouds of philosophical exegesis, analysis, and discussion. 3 One predictable consequence of this notorious history is that traditional interpretive moves tend to be endorsed relatively unreflectively; another, that certain elements of the texts go unnoticed and unmentioned. It is not often explicitly noted, for instance, that the point of departure for the ostensible epoche in Descartes' text is, in its own way, as "subjective" as its result. For, the judgements which are there at the focus of Descartes' interest are not experiential Anton Friedrich Koch, "The Limit of My World" ("LW") Parabel, 1 (1997), pp. 70-82. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. by Werner S. Pluhar (Indianapolis, Ind., and Cambridge, Mass.: Hackett, 1996). 3 My own The Thinking Self is in the thick of those clouds and makes reference to many others, of various degrees of density and opacity. 1
2
61
Cartesian Certainty reports, i.e. reports based on experiences-e.g. " There is a bright, warm, noisy fire (over there)"-but rep9rts ofexperiences: "Iam now seeing light, hearing a noise, feeling heat". The movement from "I am seeing (hearing, feeling)" to "I seem to see (hear, feel)" perhaps suspends judgement regarding the veridicality of a reported experience, but not regarding the occurrence, character, or content of the experience. To put it schematically in terms of an "I think", the explicit textual transition is roughly from "I think truly that there is a bright, warm, noisy fire (over there)" to "I think truly orfalsely that there is a bright, warm, noisy fire (over there)", and that is a movement wholly within a "subjective" mode of discourse. What is at least not obvious is whether and how an epoche whose point of departure was framed as an explicit objective judgement, and whose result was "neutrally" framed in terms of "seeming", would implicate subjectivity. Taken at face value, the movement from "There is a bright, warm, noisy fire (over there)" to "There seems to be a bright, warm, noisy fire (over there)" indeed suspends judgement and "retreats" from an objective truth-claim, but, to put it crudely, that might be all that it does. Compare, for instance, the transition from "There are owls in these woods" to "There could be owls in these woods". The latter claim plainly suspends the commitment expressed by the former to the existence of certain owls, but there is no immediately evident reason to suppose that it has any special relationship to the "I think" of Descartes' cogito or to Kant's original apperception. One can, of course, introduce "subjectivity" into the terminus of each of these ostensible epoches in the form of an explicit first-person pronoun-"It seems to me that there is a bright, warm, noisy fire (over there)"; "For all I know there are owls in these woods"-but it would need to be argued that these were non-ampliative paraphrases (or "analyses") which only made explicit a form of "subjectivity" that was implicit in the original formulations. This is not to say that a genuine epoche would not as such implicate subjectivity. But it is to insist that interpreting the suspension of a claim to objective truth as a step into subjectivity already involves a substantial piece of philosophical theorizing. I have phrased these opening remarks with some care, speaking of "ostensible epoche", since I do not in fact believe that, in ordinary (non-philosophical) discourse, either "There seems to be ..." or "There could be ..." (or, for that matter, any other expression) ever actually functions only to convey a suspension of belief and retreat from objective truth-commitments. The idea of a pure epoche is rather a philosophical fiction, an idealization that abstracts from some features of our customary discursive and cognitive practices in order to highlight others. What more is ordinarily implicit in claim~ of the 62
Cartesian Certainty form "There seems to be ...", i.e. over and above the suspension of a particular claim to objective truth, might very well arguably turn out to be something "subjective", but even if so, it would still not follow that there is anything literally subjective about a sceptical epoche as such. These cautionary remarks in hand, however, I shall in what follows initially adopt the expository fiction that a claim of the fornl "There seems to be . . ." expresses a pure epoche, and so differs from the corresponding claim of the form "There is ..." only in withholding the objective truth-claim which the latter is paradigmatically used to express. Even if an "I think" does turn out to be implicated in allY and every epoche, it will be important to understand, so to speak, which "I think" it is supposed to be. In ordinary contexts, the expression 'I think' functions first and foremost to locate one's episten1ic attitude roughly midway on the spectrum between certitude and doubt. Compare, for instance, at a wine-tasting, "It's a 1996 Michelsberg Piesporter Spatlese" , which is verdictive, expressing a confident judgement that one is typically prepared to defend by citing credible evidence, with "I think it's a 1996 Michelsberg Piesporter Spatlese", which is more tentative, expressing a defeasible opinion which one typically has less compelling reasons to endorse, and both of these with "It could be a 1996 Michelsberg Piesporter Spatlese", which, in that context, expresses a real possibility; that is, a judgement in which one has relatively little confidence, but which there is nevertheless still some positive and non-negligible reason to believe obtains. (The proposition is, so to speak, still epistemically in the running.) Thus there are certainly uses of 'I think' that "suspendjudgen1ent" in the sense that they express the absence of complete certitude or a lack of firn1 conviction: Someone who says "I think that there are owls in these woods, but I'm not sure" is normally unwilling to commit himself unreservedly to "There are owls in these woods". But, since the expression characteristically locates its speaker near the midpoint of the attitudinal spectrum, there will also be contextual uses of 'I think' which have precisely the opposite discursive function of emphasizing the speaker's conviction: "I've listened to your reasons to the contrary, but they don't convince me. I (still) think that there are owls in these woods." Koch, of course, recognizes that there are many ways to use the expression 'I think', but he also proposes to isolate among them a distinctively CartesianKantian use of 'I think' whose sole function is to suspend objective judgement. We shall take the cogito only as a means of suspending objectivity claims and of thereby inducing infallibility in what remains of the objectivity claim after suspension. This last point is important. For every objective truth claim, in which I am invariably 63
Cartesian Certainty fallible, there is a corresponding trivial truth claim, in which I am infallible, a truth claim which is fulfilled by the sheer fact that I seriously and honestly claim so. For every objective, thick truth claim, that p, there is a corresponding trivial, thin truth claim, that I think that p (or that it seems to me that p). ("LW" 73)
The interpretive and philosophical commitments expressed by Koch in this passage go well beyond those of the text with which we began. There, the suspending of judgement was characterized-relatively uncontroversially, because relatively non-committally-as "a cognitive act of some sort", and "still a cas~ of consciousness or thinking". Here, however, something of the objectivity claim "remains" after suspension, and what remains is a truth-claim of a special sort, a "trivial, thin truth claim" with respect to which one is "infallible". Thus understood, Koch suggests, 'I think' (cogito) functions as an operator: "The cogito is but the operator of skeptical epoche and, taken as a subject-predicate sentence in its own right, falls within its own scope" ("LW" 72); i.e. that is, expresses no objective truth-claim. Since the cogito thus "falls within its own scope" , Koch argues, it cannot, qua operator, be non-trivially iterated: A belief is generally not logically equivalent to its Cartesian companion. From the fact that I believe that it is snowing, it does not follow that it is snowing. Otherwise I would be infallible in this belief. The situation is different, however, if I iterate the cogito-operation: I think that I think that it is snowing. Since the inner "I think" already falls within the domain of its own application, nothing is added by the outer one. It is a merely nominal, grammatical but not logical, accompaniment of the first "I think" . "I think that p" follows from "I think that I think that p", and conversely. ("ZW" 21)4
Koch takes this sort of self-applicability or non-trivial iterability to capture the sense of Kant's claim that the 'I think' of original apperception"cannot be accompanied by any further presentation" (B132), but the interpretation strikes me as strained. On the face of it, it is one thing to say that the cogito-operator cannot be accompanied by something, namely any further presentation, full stop, and quite another to say that it cannot be non-trivially applied to something, namely itself. The n10st straightforward reading surely takes Kant at his word. If on some, but not every, occasion of its occurrence the 'I think' were accompanied by some further presentation, then it would not be "one and the same in all consciousness". And there are other, arguably more plausible, exegetical options as well. In the Akademie edition, for instance, 4 From Anton Friedrich Koch, "Zweierlei Wahrheit als Thema der Philosophie" ("ZW"), in Bernd Jochen Hilberath (ed.), Dimensionen der Wahrheit (Tiibingen and Basel: A. Francke Verlag, 1999), pp. 17-31. The translation is my own. Cf. "LW", 73: "Cogito mecogitare or 'I think that I think (that p)' does not tell us anything new as compared with the simple cogito or 'I think (that p)'."
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Cartesian Certainty
Goldschmidt suggests 'abgeleitet' ("derived from") in place of 'begleitet' ("accompanied by") at this point, a reading which harmonizes better with Descartes' own representation of the cogito-"argument" as non-syllogistic in the second set of Replies (to Mersenne): [When] we become aware that we are thinking things, this is a primary notion which is not derived by means of any syllogism. When someone says 'I am thinking, therefore I am, or I exist' , he does not deduce existence from thought by means of a syllogism, but recognizes it as something self-evident by a simple intuition of the mind. This is clear from the fact that if he were deducing it by means of a syllogism, he would have to have had previous knowledge of the major premiss 'Everything which thinks is, or exists'; yet in fact he learns it from experiencing in his own case that it is impossible that he should think without existing. It is in the nature of our mind to construct general propositions on the basis of our knowledge of particular ones. (AT 140-1 = CS 100)
In any event, as Koch hin1self elsewhere realizes, it is misleading to say that such a cogito-operator falls within its own scope when "taken as a subjectpredicate sentence in its own right". It is misleading because to treat 'I think' as an operator is precisely to bracket and suspend the normal implications of its subject-predicate surface structure, namely, that it expresses the product of a synthesis of two semantic moments, "referring" ("picking something out") and "characterizing" ("saying something about it"). On the contrary: Immunity [to error] emerges when the subject-predicate structure, and thereby the referential role of the subject-expression "I", is deactivated. The possibility of error returns as soon as the subject-predicate structure is reactivated. It is deactivated by abstracting from the claim to objectivity; reactivated, by canceling that abstraction. The expression "I think" is consequently an operator (one which abstracts from a claim to objectivity) just in case it falls within the domain of its own operation, for then and only then do we abstract from its logical articulation. If, on the other hand, we interpret it as lying outside its domain of application, it ceases to be an operator and becomes the first part of a singular proposition with a mental predicate. (" ZW" 20)
In other words, to take the subject-predicate surface grammar of the expression 'I thil1k' at face value is to acknowledge that it is more than a mere operator. It is logically articulated, and every transition to an "I think"-accompaniment results in a proposition which ascribes a mental predicate to a logical subject, to nle myself. Such a proposition, like all propositions, is bipolar, i.e., it can be false. I can, e.g., lie when I say "I think that it is snowing". (" ZW" 20)
This last remark is peculiar, since I can, of course, also lie within an epoche. Even if I cannot be mistaken about how things seem to me, nothing prevents me from intentionally and successfully misrepresenting this to others. On tIle 65
Cartesian Certainty face of it, "I seem to see (hear, feel) a bright warm noisy fire (over there)" differs from "cogito" (full stop) and "ego sum" or "ego existo" in this respect, and "There seems to be a bright warm noisy fire (over there)" surely does. I can perhaps simulate dissembling about "cogito" or "sum" by explicitly asserting that I do not think (at all) or do not exist, but it is difficult to imagine that I could seriously intend thereby to deceive or mislead my audience. 5 On the other hand, there is nothing to prevent my lying about what I seem to see, hear, or feel, and if it can be true or false of me that I seem to see light, feel warmth, and hear a noise, it is not obvious why what I say when I say this of myselfcannot also be true or false. This, of course, raises the question of precisely what we are to make of "infallibility" in this context; that is, what it means for a truth claim to be, as Koch also puts it, "immune to fallibility and to skepticism" ('~LW" 73). Presumably adverting to what is expressed by "I certainly seem to see, to hear, and to be warmed", Descartes claims "This cannot be false", clearly intending thereby a privileged epistemic status earlier claimed for cogito and ego sum or ego existo. In the context of his "genie malign" heuristic, the relevant form of "certainty" amounts to the impossibility of being deceived". With respect to such matters, one cannot be misled. But, of course, Descartes' heuristic demon is no part of Koch's expository apparatus. We will consequently need to seek some other elucidation of the sense of ~infallibility' he has in mind. But first there is son1e other business to attend to. Koch's explicit mention of mental self-ascriptions has also brought another Kantian theme explicitly into the foreground; namely, inner sense, one's "self-monitoring" capacity to be aware of thought-episodes more or less as they occur: "By means of inner sense, the mind intuits itself, or its inner state" (A22 = B37) By speaking of "intuition" here, Kant inter alia intends to stress that inner sense, like each of our"outer" senses, is a passive faculty, a circumstance that leads, he suggests, to certain comn1on confusions: H
[We] intuit ourselves only as we are inwardly affected; and this seems contradictory because [although, qua affecting ourselves, we would be active] we would then have to relate to ourselves as passive [qua affected by ourselves]. And this is the reason why 5 Difficult, but, given an appropriate context, perhaps not entirely in1possible. I might, for instance; undertake to fake my death; for example, by staging a convincing car accident. Prior to doing so, I prepare a videotape, to be played for my friends and heirs after the event. "If you are watching this videotape," I say into the camera, "I no longer exist", expecting and intending those words to be heard in a setting where what they say will be believed, but in fact false. It's not clear that my utterance qualifies as a lie-it's not even clear whether it qualifies as an assertion-but, given the appropriate staging, it can certainly qualify as a deliberate deception and successfully induce a false belief in its audience.
66
Cartesian Certainty people in their systems of psychology usually prefer to pass inner sense off as being the same as the power of apperception (which we carefully distinguish from inner sense). (B153)6
By Kant's lights, then, inner sense (and so perhaps its 'I think') should be distinguished from original apperception (and its 'I think'), and this naturally raises the question of whether and how they are related. Kant's own explanation of the distinction is, to put it charitably, heavily theory-laden: Apperception and its synthetic unity is so far from being the same as inner sense that, as the source of all combination, it applies rather to the manifold of intuitions as such, and-under the name of the categories-applies, prior to all sensible intuition, to objects as such. Inner sense, on the other hand, contains the mere form of intuition, but without combination of the manifold in this form, and hence contains as yet no determinate intuition at all. (B 154)
It is safe to say that these remarks as they stand are hardly transparent and, correlatively, not immediately helpful. The point of Kant's appeal to "the synthetic unity of apperception" , to put it briskly, is to solve the problem of the unity of the experiencing subject, the one "I" who thinks this and that. 7 In the second Meditation Descartes simply takes it for granted that the unity of his thinking self is the unity of a continuant substance, moving immediately from: I think X and I think y and I think z. to:
The "I" who thinks X =the "I" who thinks Y =the "I" who thinks Z. 8
Hume's anti-dogmatic alarm clock had done its work well, however, and Kant consequently saw clearly that the concept of such a thinking substance (a persisting subject) is no less problematic than the concept of an extended one (a persisting object). Hume notoriously emphasizes the systematic introspective elusiveness of any such continuant self-the thinking subject is not 6 Cf. B156: "[We] intuit ourselves through [inner sense] only as we are inwardly affected byourselves; i.e., we must concede that, as far as inner intuition is concerned, our own [self as] subject is cognized by us only as appearance, but not in terms of what it is in itself." 7 What follows is telegraphic. Its content, however, is thoroughly expanded, elucidated, and supported, both exegetically and argunlentatively, in The Thinking Self(see n. 3 above.). Here I shall have to make do with the telegraphic version. S "But what then am I? A thing that thinks. What is that? A thing that doubts, understands, affirms, denies, is willing, is unwilling, and also imagines and has sensory perceptions ... Is it not one and the same'!' who is now doubting almost everything, who nonetheless understands something, who affirms that this one thing is true, denies everything else, desires to know more, is unwilling to be deceived, imagines many things even involuntarily, and is aware of many things which apparently come from the senses?" (AT 28 =CS 19).
67
Cartesian Certainty itself an object of experiential encounter9-and the question consequently arises how we identify the "I" who thinks this as the same as the "I" who thinks that. What entitles us to the identities that Descartes takes for granted? Normally we determine whether the person who did one thing is the same as the person who did another by using signs, tests, or criteria of personal identity, e.g. physical appearance, fingerprints, DNA signatures, but when we are dealing with the thinking self that is precisely what we cannot do. Considered just as an "I" who thinks this or that, the thinking self doesn't have any empirical properties. So we have a problem. Kant proposes an ingenious solution. Given that I think X and I think Y and I think Z,
what entitles me to conclude that The "I" who thinks X =the "I" who thinks Y =the "I" who thinks Z.
(Kant calls this the analytic unity of apperception) is the possibility of combining the objects of the several acts of thinking into a single "complex" item, itself the object of a single act of thinking: I think [X + Y + Z].
(Kant calls this the synthetic unity of apperception.): [The] empirical consciousness, which accompanies different presentations is intrinsically sporadic and without any reference to the subject's identity. Hence this reference comes about not through my merely accompanying each presentation with consciousness, but through my adding one presentation to another and being conscious of their synthesis. Hence only because I can combine a manifold of given presentations in one consciousness, is it possible for me to present the identity itself of the consciousness in these presentations. I.e., the analytic unity of apperception is possible only under the presupposition of some synthetic unity of apperception. (B 133)
The story of the pluses in the schema "I think [X + Y + Z]", in turn, i.e. the story of how the various objects of our myriad awarenesses get "combined" into a single ("complex") item, is precisely the story of the interconnections that mark our multitudinous perceptual experiences as all encounters with one lawful natural world. In Kant's terminology, they are the interconnections that result in the objective "synthetic unity of experience"-location in 9 "For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other ... I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe anything but the perception" (THN 1. iv.6).
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Cartesian Certainty
one space, occurrence in one time-series, and such "categorial" connections as substantial identity of objects and causal dependence among events. 10 What Kant calls "the power of apperception" (B 154), in other words, is an active power of synthesis, the capacity to combine or unify distinct perceptions ("the manifold of intuitions as such") into one "general experience" "in which all perceptions are presented as being in thoroughgoing and law-governed coherence" (AI 10). It is in this sense that the "I think" of apperception is "the source of all combination" , including, crucially, the unified contents of the individual thought-episodes of which one becomes aware through inner sense. The "I think" of inner sense "contains the mereform of intuition, but ... as yet no determinate intuition" (B154), in the sense that it always needs to be completed by a specification of what is thought. Every individual exercise of inner sense results in "accompanying [aJ presentation with consciousness" (B133), and thus presupposes the occurrence of a unified (synthesized) presentation (i.e. thought-episode) which can be accompanied by an explicit "I think". With these distinctions in hand, we can, at least in principle, imagine an entity, call it 'Abnis', 11 who is like us in experiencing a unified law-governed world from a systematically changing point of view in space and time, but who is unlike us in not instantiating the modes of self-affection requisite for the self-monitoring capacity to be aware of its experiencings as such. Abnis would be subject to the conditions of "original apperception"-its perceptions would have the synthetic form of the experiences of a unitary subject-while lacking any faculty of "inner sense". While an "I think" would in some sense be "capable of accompanying all [its] presentations" (B132)-for otherwise they would not all be its presentations-Abnis would lack the ability actually explicitly to think "I think" . Could Abnis perform an epoche? Well, if so, it will not take the form of Descartes' transition from "I am now seeing light, hearing a noise, feeling heat" to "I certainly seem to see, to hear, and to be warmed" . Ex hypothesi, the subject-predicate form "I think"-and so too its particularization to the various sensory modalities: "I see", "I hear", "I feel", and the like-is not part of its conceptual repertoire. But there does not appear to be any reason why Abnis could not have command of an operator (say, 'seems') whose (sole) function would be to suspend commitment and "retreat" from an objective
10 The essential moments of this story are elucidated and defended in my One World and Our Knowledge of It (Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel, 1980). 11 For"Apperception but no inner sense" .
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Cartesian Certainty
truth claim. Its epoche, in other words, would take the form of a transition from, for example, There is a bright warm noisy fire over there. to:
Seems[There is a bright warm noisy fire over there.]
It is important to note that what falls within the scope of such a 'seems'operator is a complete objective judgement. The conceptual content of such a 'seems'-judgement is dependent upon, because identical to, the conceptual . content of the objective truth-claim, commitment to which the operator then "brackets" and suspends. The epoche that we are presently envisioning thus answers to Husserl's original characterization: The world experienced in this reflecting life [i.e. subsequent to the epochel continues in a certain sense to be experienced by me with exactly the same content that earlier belonged to it. It continues to appear as it previously appeared. It is just that I, as one reflecting philosophically, no longer hold valid the natural existence-belief [commitment] that takes place when experiencing the world, although it is nevertheless still there and also registered by the attentive glance. 12
Such a 'seems'-operator consequently also exemplifies the sort of trivial iterability that Koch attributes to the cogito. If the conceptual content of 'Seems [P] , is identical to the conceptual content of 'p', then the conceptual content of 'Seems [seems [P]]' will be identical to the content of 'Seems [P]' and so also to the conceptual content of 'p'. Since the sole function of the 'seems'-operator is to suspend the objective truth-claim in1plicit in the content to which it is applied, the effect of the iterated operator is identical to that of the operator itself. In the relevant sense, then, this 'seems'-operator also "falls within its own scope". Contrary to I<.och's leading thesis, however, to suspend objective commitment by an epoche of this sort is not, at least on the face of it, to move from objectivity to subjectivity. 13 We thus have at least two further questions on our 12 "Die in diesem reflektierenden Leben erfahrene Welt bleibt dabei in gewisser Weise rur mich weiter und genau mit dem ihr jeweilig zugeh6rigen Gehalt erfahrene wie vorher. Sie erscheint weiter, wie sie vordem erschien, nur daB ich als philosophisch Reflektierender nicht mehr den natiirlichen Seinsglauben der Welterfahrung in Vollzug, in Geltung halte, indes er doch noch mit da ist und vom aufmerkenden Blick mit erfaBt ist" (Edmund Husserl, Cartesianische Meditationen (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1995), p. 21). 13 On the other hand, Koch evidently recognizes, and indeed explicitly wants to defend, our identification of conceptual contents outside and inside an epoche: "The true answer [to the question: Who or what is the'!' who thinks and, hence, exists?] consists in simply identifying the world as it seems to me, with the world as it is in itself-and in declaring the difference between the in-itself and appearance or seeming to be a difference of reflection, i.e., a difference of perspective of some sort" ("LW" 76). Apart from its equation of the epoche's non-comn1ittal "appearance or seeming" with the necessarily subjective "world as it seems to me", this suggestion is precisely on the mark.
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Cartesian Certainty
agenda. We need to ask, first, whether, despite appearances, this sort of epoche also somehow involves an essential subjectivity. And we need to ask, second, whether, and, if so, why and how such 'seenls'-judgements are infallible. At least four distinct questions are implicated in the matter of subjectivity. We can put the issues this way: Ex hypothesi Abnis can perform an epoche by applying a 'seen1s'-operator to its objective judgements, but lacks a faculty of inner sense and the correlative conceptual competence explicitly to say or think "I think". Suppose now that Abnis is subsequently supplied with the relevant n10des of self-affection and learns to monitor and report (some of) its own thought-episodes using sentences of the form "I am (here and now) thinking ...", i.e. sentences in the first-person continuous present, which contrast inter alia both with sentences of the forms" S/ he is (here and now) thinking. . ." and with sentences of the form "I was (then and there) thinking ...". Is there any reason, first, to expect sentences of the form "I think . ..", i.e. sentences using the same verb but in the first-person simple present, to come to be used to report beliefs or opinions in the sense of epistemic commitments ("I think ..." ~ "I believe ...")? Second, if so, is there any reason to expect such sentences also to come to be used to express an epistemic attitude or degree of conviction roughly midway between doubt and certitude and so to temper and diminish the level of epistemic commitment ("I think . .." ~ "I'm inclined to believe ...")? Third, is there any reason to expect "I think" to be used to formulate the condition of Kantian "original apperception" (i.e. that an "I think" must be capable of accompanying all my presentations)? And, finally, is there any reason to expect such sentences also to be used simply to perform an epoche; that is, entirely to suspend epistemic commitment and "retreat" from any objective truth-claim ("I think ..." ~ "Seems[...]")? There is plainly quite a lot to sort out here. The best place to start is with the notion of thinking itself. Just what is thinking? What is it for a person to be thinking something? Supplying a complete answer to these questions is a tall order, of course, but we can begin by recapitulating some of the classical story of thoughts. According to this story, thoughts or, more precisely, thought-episodes, are datable events which are (i) "mel1tal" in the sense of being intentional; that is, correctly characterizable in semantic terms (e.g. 'means', 'denotes', 'implies', and the like, as well as the quotational and 'that'-clause constructions ancillary to them); 14 (ii) "inner" at least in the sense of occurring wholly within the physical boundaries of an organism; 14 I take this to be essentially equivalent to, but usefully more precise than, Brentano's chara~ terization of intentionality in terms of "aboutness".
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Cartesian Certainty
(iii) "private" in the sense that their occurrence need not be manifested in any publicly observable way; and (iv) among the proximate causal antecedents of public utterances which are analogous to such thought-episodes in also being correctly characterizable in semantic/intentional terms. Call this the minimal story of thoughts. Traditionally, this fran1ework has also carried with it a variety of additional commitments, central among them a priority thesis to the effect that semantic/intentional character attaches originally and fundamentally to thought-episodes and only derivatively and secondarily to linguistic items. In our own century, in contrast, the tendency has been to invert these priorities, holding instead that the primary use of our semantic apparatus is to describe and classify overt verbal episodes, and that its deployment in discourse about thoughts and beliefs is (e.g. paratactically, analogically, or theoretically) derivative from such use. Again, the specifically Cartesian version of the story also holds that thoughts are "mental", "inner", and "private" in stronger and more problematic senses, specifically, that they occur as epistemically transparent (self-disclosing) states of a non-physical (non-extended) substance. For the time being, however, we shall avoid taking on any such additional commitments, at least unless and until the subsequent course of argument compels us to do so. The minimal story of thoughts is already quite rich enough to serve as a useful point of departure. IS Within the framework of this minimal story, Wilfrid Sellars usefully distinguishes among three ways in which a linguistic item can be in1plicated in "expressing a thought", and, correlatively, among three senses of 'express' and three corresponding senses of 'thought' ("LTC" 109).16 There is what he calls an "action" sense of 'express' in which expressing is something a person does and 'thought' roughly synonymous with'opinion' or 'conviction'; for example: Schmidt expressed(l) his thought that he would win by saying "Victory will be mine".
(1)
a "causal" sense of 'express' which in essence reports the fact that an instance of overt linguistic behaviour is the culmination of a process which began with the occurrence of a thought-eplsode; for example:
15 Cf. Sellars, "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind" ("EPM"), repro as ch. 5 of Science, Perception, and Reality (Atascadero, Calif.: Ridgeview, 1963, repro 1991), sect. XI: "Thoughts: The Classical View", pp. 177-8. 16 "Language as Thought and Communication" ("LTC"), first pub. in Philosophy and PhenomenologicalResearch, 29 (1969), pp. 506-27; repro as ch. 5, pp. 93-117, of Wilfrid Sellars, Essays in Philosophy and Its History, (Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel, 1974) ("LTC" refers to the latter).
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Cartesian Certainty (2)
Schmidt's utterance of 'The signal is red' expressed(2) a thought (indeed, his thought) that the signal is red.
- in contrast, a robot's or parrot's utterance of 'The signal is red' does not, in this sense, express a thought (its thought) that the signal is red-and a "logical" or "semantic" sense of 'express' illustrated by: (3)
Schmidt's utterance of 'Schnee ist schwartz' expresses(3) the thought that snow is black.
where 'thought' is used essentially as Frege used Gedanke; that is, as roughly synonymous with 'proposition' .17 Contexts like (1) explicitly concern commitn1ents; (2), causes; and (3), contents. With a little tweaking, 'belief' can in principle replace 'thought' in each of these contexts. In the case of (2), for exan1ple, the characteristic (infelicitous) contrived idiom would be "occurrent belief"; an "occurrent belief" , in other words, just is a thought-episode. In the most frequent and natural sense of the term, however, one's beliefs are one's thoughts in sense (1); that is, one's opinions or convictions. The leading idea is that an epistemic commitment (roughly, a commitment to support by appropriate justificatory appeals a determinate propositional content when confronted with various sorts of legitimate cognitive challenges)-a thought in sense (I)-is characteristically instantiated in a suitable conditional disposition to appropriate thought-episodesthoughts in sense (2)-and/or utterances, which express-in sense (3)-the (propositional) content of that commitment. Thus Sellars: Jones believes that-p = Jones has a settled disposition to think that-p, if the question occurs to him whether-p, and, indeed, to think out loud that-p, unless he is in a keeping-his-thoughts-to-himself frame of mind ("LTC" 112)
where "thinking-out-Ioud" amou.nts to "candidly al1d spontaneously uttering 'p' , where the person ... who utters 'p' is doing so as one who knows the language to which p' belongs" ("LTC" 104).1 8 On Sellars' view, such thinkings-out-Ioud are not audience-directed social acts, and not everything 17 Frege, of course, thought of his Gedanken as abstract entities, objects having ontological status. The use of 'proposition' here, in contrast, continues to be ontologically innocent and theoretically non-committal. 18 The emphasis is Sellars', and the point of the restriction is to rule out "parroting" and "programmed-automaton" sorts of linguistic disposition. The person who "candidly and spontaneously" utters 'p' as one who knows the language, in other words, understands what he has said in the sense of being able to relate the content which his utterance expresses-in sense (3)-to other linguistically expressed contents; that is, to elucidate or paraphrase what he has said, to deploy it as a premise in reasoning, to recognize evidence for or against it, and so on.
73
Cartesian Certainty that, broadly speaking, can be said can be thought-out-Ioud. Indeed, the fact that some sayings, e.g. explicit performatives, are essentially doings of another sort (i.e. linguistic actions such as promisings, baptizings, and the like) precisely precludes their being thinkings-out-Ioud. Thinkings-out-Ioud, although indeed linguistic acts-both in the sense of being actualities and in the sense of being actualizations of dispositions-are not themselves actions.1 9 The connection between a person's utterances and his episten1ic andjustificatory commitments that is made explicit in the notion of linguistic actions in which he uses language intending to express(1)-i.e. to make manifest and so to communicate-his thoughts(1) (= beliefs, opinions, convictions) to someone is already implicitly caught up in the practice of regarding assertive utterances as implicitly context-dependent actualizations of dispositions to the thought-episodes that they thereby "causally" express(2)' Sellars does not emphasize this dimension of the thought-belief nexus in "Language as Thought and Communication", but that is largely because other concerns don1inate his agenda. Instead, he characterizes the relevant contexts cursorily as those in which "the question occurs to [S] whether-p" and, in a footnote, explains only that: the "if the question occurs to [5] whether-p" condition can be taken to cover all cases in which, where the alternatives "p" and "not p" are relevant to his course of thought, he thinks that-p, even if the question whether-p is not actually raised. ("LTC" 117 n. 9)
Sellars does not pause to explore the question of whether all such cases have anything in common, but the suggestion seems plausible enough that circumstances in which a choice between the alternatives "p" and "not-p" become relevant to a person's line of thought are, in the first instance, typically connected to contexts in which he needs or wants to take a stand on the matter. A conditional disposition to have such thoughts(2)' then, will be coupled to the conditional disposition to support or defend their contents against
19 A slightly more full-dress version of this linchpin of Sellars' Verbal Behaviourism (VB) occurs in "Meaning as Functional Classification": "According to VB, thinking 'that-p,' where this means 'having the thought occur to one that-p,' has as its primary sense saying 'p'; and a secondary sense in which it stands for a short term proximate propensity to say 'p'. Propensities tend to be actualized ... ; when they are not, we speak of them as, for example, 'blocked'. The VB I am constructing sees the relevant inhibiting factor which blocks a saying that-p as that of not being in a thinking-out-1oud frame of mind ("MFC" 418-19). Here, too, Sellars goes on to stress that the candid spontaneous utterances that qualify as episodes of thinking-out-10ud "must not be thought of as linguistic actions. More accurately, they must not be construed as other-directed or social actions" ("MFC" 420). .
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Cartesian Certainty
various cognitive challenges. 2o Thus what Sellars calls the "action" sense of 'expressing' is correlative to what might be called the "conviction" or "commitment" sense-or, in the light of its connection to questions of warrant and justification, the "epistemic" or "normative" sense-of 'thought'. Henceforth I shall reserve 'believes' and 'beliefs' (or 'opinions') for this sense of 'thinks' and 'thoughts', and 'express' without a subscriptfor expression in the correlative "action", "commitment", or "epistemic" sense. This is the sense in which we can ask a person to express her thoughts on this or that matter, e.g. international politics or the stock market, and enquire into her reasons for answering as she does by asking "Why do you think that?". Like the assertions and thinkings-ol1t-Ioud that express then1, such beliefs or opinions can be warranted or unwarranted, justified or unjustified, and one can inquire into the cogency of a person's reasons or grounds for believing this or that, and arrive at independent judgements regarding whether the claims to which she is in fact committed are claims to which she is also entitled. The relationships that we have just been exploring explain, I suggest, why the expression 'I think' is used to report beliefs. For, the continuous present and the simple present of a verb are typically related precisely as reports of transient occurring episodes and reports of a persisting (conditional) disposition to such episodes: "I am (here and now) reading the Journal ofRedundancy Magazine" reports an ongoing episodic activity; "I read the Journal of Redundancy Magazine (regularly, every month)" reports the corresponding standing disposition. If believing that -p is, in the first instance, a matter of being epistemically committed to the proposition that-p and thus, correlatively, a matter of being determinately disposed to manifest that commitment inter alia in contextually appropriate thought-episodes (thinkings and/or thinkings-out-Ioud) that-p, then the simple present of the verb whose continuous present is used to report such episodes is just the ticket for reporting the correlative disposition. That answers, affirn1atively, the first of our four questions regarding subjectivity: "Is there any reason to expect sentences of the forn1 "I think ..." to come to be used to report beliefs or opinions in the sense of epistemic commitments?". The first step toward answering the remaining three questions consists in noting that we have so far emphasized only one aspect of the expression of beliefs; namely, the (propositiol1al) content to which one who says "I think ..." 20 In Making It Explicit (MIE), (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994), Robert Brandom has stressed and explored in exquisite detail the social-pragmatic constitution of "propositional" linguistic actions, paradigmatically assertions, and the content-conferring role of the justificatory commitments and entitlements that track their specifically inferential articulation.
75
Cartesian Certainty reports his commitment. As we have already remarked, however, command of the first-person predicative form "Ian1 (here and now) thinking ..." carries with it a command of the contrasting forms "S/he is (here and now) thinking ..." and "I was (then and there) thinking ...". Correlatively, someone who is in a position to report his present epistemic commitments by saying "I think ..." will normally also be in a position to report both the present commitments of others and his own past commitments, commitnlents \vhich will often differ from those which he is (then and there) prepared to express and support or defend. Since opinions do differ, epistemic challenges to one's present commitn1ents are to be expected, and the fact that some, but not all, of one's own beliefs can and do change in the face of such challenges suggests that those beliefs come in various strengths; that is, are held with more or less conviction. It would consequently be useful to have a family of linguistic devices for conveying the strength of an epistemic commitment to a proposition that-p, and, il1 particular, for communicating degrees of conviction intermediate between the extremes of certitude that-p and certitude that not-po Within the framework which we have so far developed, epistemic commitments can be manifested in two distinct ways. A person can both report his commitment to, for example, the proposition that-p--by asserting "I believe that-p"-and express his commitment to the proposition that-p--by asserting that-po While an assertion can, of course, subsequently be defended against cognitive challenges with, so to speak, more or less vigour and persistence, thereby reflecting various degrees of conviction, the expressive device of simpIe unqualified assertion, although entirely adequate for manifesting epistemic commitment per se, is plainly ill suited to convey such nuances of attitude. Once an epistemic commitment has been made explicit in the form of an "I think" (= "I believe") report, in contrast, degrees of conviction short of certitude can be expressed in the form of explicit n10difiers: "I firmly believe ...", "I'm (strongly, somewhat) inclined to believe ...", "I believe ... but I'm not sure", and so on. Such an explicit assertion to the effect that one is epistemically committed to some proposition with a degree of conviction short of certitude also serves as an occasion for raising the question of whether and why one should be epistemically committed to it with that, or any, degree of conviction, and so serves as a point of entry for a normative enquiry into the nature and quality of the grounds or reasons for believingit. Thus corresponding to the attitudinal spectrum of intensities of conviction represented by suitably modified forms of "I think" (= "I believe") we find a normativeepistemic spectrum of justificatory strengths appertaining to such grounds or 76
Cartesian Certainty reasons for believing. In this sense, one's evidence, for instance, might be characterized as weak, plausible, strong, or adequate to warrant belief "beyond a reasonable doubt" or even "with moral certainty" . Moving from expressing one's commitment to the proposition that-p by asserting that-p to manifesting that commitment by reporting one's degree of conviction, i.e. that one believes more-or-less strongly that-p, consequently represents a significant gain in expressive and discursive power. Reasons for believing can subsequently be discussed as such and explicitly related to the .degrees of conviction that they legitin1ately justify or warrant. An unqualified assertion, not embedded in the matrix "I think (believe) that ...", thereby can be reserved for expressing unqualified conviction or certitude. Correlatively, an explicit denial of belief, i.e. one's assertion of "I don't believe that-p" (full stop), conveys one's rejection of any degree of epistemic conviction that-p, and so one's dissent from the proposition that-p itself. This explains, inter alia, what is paradoxical about "Moore's-paradox" sentences: "p, but I don't believe that-p". The second conjunct reports (and its assertion thus expresses) the rejection of the very proposition whose unqualified epistemic acceptance is expressed by an assertion of the first conjunct. The conjunctive proposition as a whole, in consequence, is expressively incoherent. That is, it cannot be coherently asserted. 21 These considerations answer, in the affirmative, our second question regarding subjectivity: "Is there al1Y reason to expect "I think" (= "I believe") sentences to come to be used to express an epistemic attitude or degree of conviction roughly midway between doubt and certitude and so to temper and diminish the level of epistemic con1mitn1ent?" The answer to our third question, in contrast-"Is there any reason to expect 'I think' to be used to formulate the condition of Kantian 'original apperception'?"-does not turn on issues of epistemic commitment at all. It is useful at this point to recall that Descartes' use of 'think' (cogitatio) and 'thoughts' (cogitationes) is highly generic. A thing which thinks is a "thing that 21 Cf. "I intend to do X, but I won't do it". The first conjunct reports (and so its assertion expresses) the speaker's intention to perform the action X; his asserting the second conjunct expresses his intention not to perform that same action. In consequence, the sentence as a whole is expressively incoherent. It cannot be coherently asserted. (Parenthetically, if "I believe ... " is, in this way, a linguistic device for reporting, and so making explicit, degrees of conviction short of certitude, otherwise manifested only in the degrees of vigour and persistence with which one defends one's epistemic commitments, we would surely expect to find an analogous linguistic device for reporting, and so making explicit, the sort of epistemic confidence n1anifested in, and so expressed by, bare unqualified assertion. And indeed we do. That's just the fundamental job of "I know ..."-but a complete discussion will have to be postponed until later.)
77
Cartesian Certainty doubts, understands, affirms, denies, is willing, is unwilling, and also imagines and has sensory perceptions" (AT 28 = CS 19). In terms of our present framework, this Cartesian remark amounts to the observation that we regard (linguistic) expressions(l) of doubt, understanding, agreement, disagreement, willingness, refusal, imagining, perceiving, and the like as all expressions(2)-i.e. manifest effects-of thought=episodes. 22 Call this the principle that meaningful speech originates in thought-episodes. Descartes, of course, also regarded the meaningfulness of linguistic performances as derivative from and explained by the meaningfulness of the thoughts whose occurrence they manifest, but we earlier elected not to adopt that commitment as part of our minimal framework of thoughts, and there is still no reason to do so. We are presently considering a being who possesses "inner sense" and can consequently monitor and report in the first person the occurrence of some of his thought-episodes; that is, those which happen appropriately to affect him. Such a report, e.g. "I am (here and now) thinking that there's a rabbit behind that tree", however, not only adverts to an occurrence of a thought-episode, »There's a rabbit behind that tree.«, but also expresses(1) the speaker's thought (= belief) that he is then and there thinking that thought; that is, that such an occurrence is an episode in his history. According to the principle that n1eaningful speech originates in thought-episodes, then, this report itself is the (causal) expression(2) of a further unreported (meta-) thought-episode, roughly, »(Amdng what) I think (is): »There's a rabbit behind that tree.«.«. Contrary to the Cartesian view that all thoughts necessarily occur propria persona, however, within our present framework there is no reason to suppose that this metathought-episode will also affect its thinker in the manner necessary for him to be able to monitor and report its occurrence, and characteristically this will not be the case. Given the passive character of inner sense, that is, not every thoughtepisode must, or will, affect its thinker in the manner required for self-monitoring and explicit report: "[The] empirical consciousness, which accompanies different presentations is intrinsically sporadic and without any 22 Let us adopt "continental" anglebrackets to represent thought-contents, so to speak in oratio recta. Within our framework, then, we can explicitly represent the aspect of Descartes' generic notion of thoughts according to which thought-episodes can differ not only in their contents but also in what, by linguistic analogy, we can call their moods. Thus alongside "indicative" thoughts to the effect that something is the case (e.g. »My car is an ageing wreck.«) we can envision "optative" thoughts, expressing one's wish that something were the case (e.g. »Would that I owned a new Mercedes Benz.«); "imperative" or, better, "practical" thoughts, expressing one's decisions, intentions, and volitions (e.g. »1 shall buy a Mercedes Benz.«); "interrogative" thoughts, expressing one's questions and problems (e.g. »Can I really afford a Mercedes Benz?«); and so on.
78
Cartesian Certainty reference to the subject's identity" (B133). Indeed, since a reported thoughtepisode is numerically distinct from the meta-thought-episode whose occurrence is manifested in the report,23 on pain of infinite regress, there will necessarily always be some thought-episodes of whose occurrence their thinker is not in this way aware. My actual "direct" (i.e. non-inferential) awareness of the occurrence of a tllought-episode, in short, is not-indeed, in principle cannot be-a necessary condition of its being one among my thoughts. But, as we have seen, Kant also insists that it is not a sufficient conditionat least not in the relevant way. The fact that in inner sense a number of (reported) thought-episodes are individually "accompanied by consciousness" does not suffice to identify the thinker of anyone of them (the "I" who thinks X) as the thinker of any of the others (the "I" who thinks Y): "[This] reference comes about not through my merely accompanying each presentation with consciousness" (BI33). We are now in a position to see that the project of "original apperception" in fact confronts us with two different problems: the synchronic problem of specifying conditions for the belongingness of (each of) my thoughts (thought-episodes) individually to me as a thinker, and the diachronic problem of specifying conditions for the belongingness of my thoughts collectively to me as one and the same thinker. That I actually be aware of the occurrence of one of my thought-episodes through inner sense plausibly specifies Oilly a sufficient condition in response to only the first of these two problems. If we now ask what might serve as a necessary condition in response to that synchronic problem, the natural move is surely to shift into the mode of potentiality. What is required in order for an individual thought-episode to be one of my thoughts is not that I be actually aware of it through inner sense, but that I in principle couldbecome aware of it in this way.. And there is certainly something right about this proposal. It is surely the most straightforward interpretation of Kant's remark that "The I think must be capable of a~companying all my presentations. For otherwise something would be presented to me that could not be thought at all-which is equivalent to saying that the presentation either would be impossible, or at least would be nothing to me" (B 132). As we have seen, Kant's solution to the diachronic problem consists in his doctrine of the synthetic unity of apperception: "[Only] because I can combine a manifold of given presentations in one consciousness, is it possible for nle 23 An anti-Cartesian point that Kant stresses in the "Elucidation" to section II of the "Transcendental Aesthetic" (A36 =B53 ff.).
79
Cartesian Certainty to present the identity itself of the consciousness in these presentations" (B 133). Where I think X and I think Y-and so, where it is possible for me severally to have the meta-thoughts »1 think X« and »1 think Y«-it will be the case that the "I" who thirlks X is the "I" who thinks Y whenever it is also possible for me to think [X + Y]-and so for the I think to "accompany" the "presentation" [X + Y], or, equivalently, that it also be possible for me to have the metathought »1 think [X + Y]«. So understood, the solution of the diachronic problem presupposes the solution just suggested for the synchronic problem. That is, Kant's proposed solution of the diachronic problem of thinker-identity across diverse thought-episodes in terms of the unification (synthesis) of possible thought-contents evidently presupposes a solution of the synchronic problem regarding the belongingness of individual thought-episodes that is framed in terms of possible meta-thought-episodes. There remains, of course, the non-trivial problem of elucidating the relevant synchronic sense of possibility. That is, if we posit that an individual occurrent thought-episode, T, which in fact does not so affect me that I actually come to be aware of it through inner sense is nevertheless mine by virtue of its being possible in principle for me to become aware of it in that way, i.e. for it to so affect me that I think the (meta-)thought »1 think T«, we can also enquire into the conditions of this supposed in-principle possibility. Part of the answer to that question-the only part that we can give a priori-turns reciprocally on the solution to the diachronic problem. For, suppose that, say, X and Yare thoughts of mine of which I am aware through inner sense, i.e. that I in fact do think both »1 think X« and »1 think Y«, and that, as Kant argues, it is consequently also possible for me to think»I think [X + Y]«. Then a necessary condition of its being in-principle possible for me to think »1 think T«-where, although ex hypothesi T is a thought of which I am not aware, the "I" who thinks T is nevertheless to be (diachronically) identical to the "I" who is aware of thinking both X and Y-is that the thought-content T also be capable of being "combined" with the "manifold of givenpresentations", i.e. the thoughts X and Y, "in one consciousness" ; that is, that it be possible for me to think »1 think [X + Y + T]«. The part of the answer that we cannot give a priori concerns the correlative sufficient conditions. For, given that we have rejected Cartesian substancedualism, the thought-episodes which we have consistently been characterizing in (normative) semantic-intentional terms, i.e. in terms of their contents, are also all datable empirical events, i.e. events which also satisfy some (nonnormative, e.g. neuro-physiological) matter-of-factual description, and it will presumably be because of its determinate empirical character that this-or-that
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Cartesian Certainty
thought-episode does or does not in fact affect its thinker in the manner required for awareness through inner sense. With these complicated considerations in hand, we are finally in a position to see that, although the passive faculty of inner sense is indeed distinct from the active power of apperception, there is a clear sense in which the 'I think' of "original apperception" just is the 'I think' of inner sense. For, on the reading we have just been exploring, the 'I think' that "must be capable of accompanying all my presentations"-singly for each of them individually to be mine, and their unitary synthetic combination "in one consciousness" for all of them collectively to be mine-is the 'I think' which does accompany any of my "presentations" of which I am infact aware through inner sense. Our third question, too, then-"Is there any reason to expect 'I think' to be used to formulate the condition of Kantian 'original apperception'?"-is also answered in the affirmative. There is ample reason, then, to regard the 'I think' of inner sense as the fundamental expression of subjectivity. As we have now seen, it is arguably used to express myepistemic convictions, to communicate my epistemic attitudes, and, in the mode of potentiality, to formulate the conditions of "original apperception"; that is, of my thoughts being, individually or collectively, mine. If, therefore, there is some good reason to expect sentences of the form 'I think ...' also to be used simply to perform an epoche, i.e. to express the complete suspension of epistemic commitment and "retreat" from any objective truth-clain1 that Abnis, before being gifted with inner sense, hypothetically could and did express by sentences of the form "Seems[...]", it will also be a good reason for concluding that epoche itself is, as Koch suggests, always and essentially a movement into subjectivity. Is there, then, any good reason to suppose that our fourth question will also be answered in the affirmative? If, as we have been assuming, Abnis originally already has a perfectly functional way to express the results of an epoche, I cannot see that there is. Not that there is no reason to suppose that the withdrawal of epistemic commitment and suspension of the claim to objective truth that is expressed in the idiom of seeming will get tangled up with the 'I think' of inner sense, but it is not, I would argue, a good reason. It is a reason that rests upon a confusion. Here's how it goes: Suppose I begin with a simple assertive utterance, confidently expressing an epistemic commitment; for example, "There is a bright warm noisy fire over there". By the principle that meaningful speech originates in thoughtepisodes, such an utterance manifests the occurrence of a corresponding thought-episode, my thinking (there and then) »There is a bright warm noisy 81
Cartesian Certainty fire over there«. Now, we have seen that the conceptual content of the judgement that there seems to be a bright warm noisy fire over there is identical to the conceptual content of the original simple assertion. Ex hypothesi, all that the 'seems'-operator does is bracket and suspend commitment to the objective truth of "There is a bright warm noisy fire over there". Thus, like what a speaker expresses by "I believe that there is a bright warm noisy fire over there", what he expresses by "Seems[There is a bright warm noisy fire over there]" differs from what he expresses by "There is a bright warm noisy fire over there" fundamentally only in epistemic attitude, in the expressed strength of the speaker's (epistemic) commitment to the (objective) truth of the invariant shared (empirical, descriptive) content. The occurrence of the thought »There is a bright warm noisy fire over there«, in contrast, is manifested equally by all three linguistic performances. But in the case of an assertive utterance of "Seenls[There is a bright warm noisy fire over there]", the expressed strength of epistemic commitn1ent is nil. Nothing is being claimed to be true ofthe objective world. It lies near at hand, then, to conclude, mistakenly, that the claim that there seems to be a bright warm noisy fire over there is not about the objective world at all, and so that what is reported by the claim can only be the occurrence of the thoughtepisode whose occurrence it manifests; that is, that it reports a subjective event, the same event reported by "I am (here and now) thinking: »There is a bright warm noisy fire over there«" . Needless to say, this fallacious line of reasoning is facilitated by the fact that "I think" (in the sense of "I believe") plausibly is properly used to express epistemic commitments weaker than certitude-of which nil commitment is, as it were, the limiting case-as well as by an understandable tendency to confuse and conflate the "action" and "causal" senses of 'express'; for, an utterance of "Seems[There is a bright warm noisy fire over there]" does express(2) the occurrence of the corresponding thought-episode. An occurrence of the thought(-episode) »There is a bright warm noisy fire over there« certainly enters into the (causal) explanation of a speaker's readiness to assert that there seems to be a bright warm noisy fire over there, just as it enters into the explanation of his readiness to assert that there is a bright warm noisy fire over there. And, of course, propositional thoughtepisodes will not be all that enters into such an explanation. It will doubtless also need to appeal to some non-propositional states of the speaker-Kant calls them 'sel1sations' (Empfindungen)-themselves the results of the action of the speaker's immediate environment on him, which enter systematically into the etiology of such propositional episodes. But it 82
Cartesian Certainty is just as fallacious to conclude that an assertive utterance of "Seems[There is a bright warm noisy fire over there]"-i.e. the assertion that there seems to be a bright warm noisy fire over there, thus understood-reports the occurrence of such non-propositional sensations as it is to conclude that it reports the occurrence of the corresponding propositional thought-episodes. But surely, it will be objected at this point, the sincere claim that there seems to be a bright warm noisy fire over there, understood as expressing a pure sceptical epochi, must report something. For, how else could it be true; indeed, infallibly true? But since the 'seen1s'-idiom is deliberately designed to make no objective truth-claim about the world, what is reported can only be the occurrence of son1ething subjective, e.g. a thought or a sensation. Thus Koch's conclusion that "For every objective truth claim, in which I am invariably fallible, there is a corresponding trivial [subjective] truth claim, in which I am infallible, a truth claim which is fulfilled by the sheer fact that I seriously and honestly claim so" ("LW" 73). And this brings us to the second item on our current agenda: Are such 'seems'-judgements "infallible", and, if so, how and why? William Alston has formulated 24 what can arguably be called the received interpretation of Cartesian infallibility in terms of belief and knowledge. Since he is ultimately interested in the thesis that beliefs about one's own mental states are as such infallible, his characterization is framed in terms of "types of propositions": (Dl)
P (a person) enjoys infallibility with respect to a type of proposition, R =dfFor any proposition, S, of type R, it is logically impossible that P should believe that S without knowing that S. (EJ261)
but it is a straightforward matter to transpose this account into a characterization of infallibility for a particular judgement. In the process of doing so, I shall introduce a few simplifications. Alston's formulation in terms of logical inconsistency ("it is logically impossible that X without Y") is obviously equivalent to a formulation in terms of logical implication; namely, "that X logically implies (or: entails) that Y". In order not to prejudge the substantial question of what sort of modality is at issue here, however, I propose to replace Alston's 'logically impossible' (or: 'logically implies') by the more general, and so less committal, 'impossible' (or: 'implies'). Finally, I shall move the resulting implication
·24 In "Varieties of Privileged Access" ,repr. as ch. 10, pp. 250-85, ofWilliamP. Alston, Epistemic Justification (EJ), (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989).
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Cartesian Certainty
statement ("that X implies that Y") down into the object-language; namely, 'if X then Y' .25 This yields the relatively simple formulation: (Dla)
P is infallible with respect to the judgement that 526 believes that 5 then P knows that 5.
=df
if P
While Descartes would perhaps find this way of putting things congenial, it is less clear that Koch would do so, and, in any case, adding 'knows' to the mix of epistemic, doxastic, and semantic terms already on the table hardly counts as an unequivocal contribution to our understanding. In fact, however, Alston derives his formulation from the traditional account of knowledge in terms of justified true belief, and inverting his derivation will enable us to identify and suspend a number of additional potentially contentious presuppositions. On Alston's view, the reason that belief logically guarantees knowledge in the relevant instances is supposed to be that, where S is a proposition of type R, that P believes that S logically implies that P's belief that S is also both true and justified. Hence, if knowledge is justified true belief (at least in a good first approxin1ation), that P believes that S will entail that P knows that S. This suggests the characterization: (D1b)
P is infallible with respect to the judgement that 5 =df if P believes that 5 then P's belief that 5 is both justified and true.
By Alston's lights, however, (D 1b) is redundant, for, on his view, the relevant sense of 'justification' is precisely truth-conduciveness. 27 That is, the reason that P's belief that S is justified in such a case is supposed to be that the mere fact that P believes that S logically guarantees that S is true. Removing the redundancy yields (D1*)
P is infallible with respect to the judgement that 5 believes that 5 then it is true that 5.
=df if
P
Let us, at least provisionally, take this as the core notion of infallibility at issue in the Cartesian tradition: P is infallible with respect to the judgement that S whenever P cannotfalsely believe that S.28 25 The "if then " here should not be read as the so-called "material conditional". It's the ordinary "if then ", which carries a commitment to a connection between the antecedent and the consequent. 26 This is my singular counterpart to Alston's" enjoys infallibility with respect to a type of proposition, R". I intend "the judgement that S" to subsume both (unexpressed) thoughts and their (public) linguistic manifestations. 27 Whether Alston is right about this, and what other sense(s) of 'justification' might (instead?) be at issue in accounts of knowledge are topics that will exercise us later. 28 Despite some exegetical difficulties, this roughly canonical account arguably captures the crux of Koch's notion of infallibility. After observing that saying "I think that it is snowing" can be
84
Cartesian Certainty
N ow, what I want to stress about this account of infallibility is its conditional character. To cut to the heart of the n1atter, there are two ways in which it can be the case that one cannot believe something falsely; for example, that S: either one can believe that S, and when one does, then what one believes is true, or one cannot believe that S in the first place. I want to examine the radical suggestion that what a successful epoche suspends is not only the claim to objective truth, but also the very possibility of belief. If this is right, then objective truth will be the only sort of truth there is. 29 Let me begin with an analogy. Suppose that, contrary to fact, the linguistic form 'I will do A!. were uniformly used only to express its speaker's predictive belief, i.e. epistemic conviction, that A is what he will in fact do (at some later tin1e), and 'I shall do A!. only to express its speaker's present intention to do A (at some later time). Since such a first-person intention plausibly incorporates a future-tensed representation of oneself as later in fact doing A, we could then represent 'I shall do A!. as a transformation of 'I will do A!., thus, 'Shall[I will do A]'. Thus understood, 'shall' \vould, like 'seems', function as an operator, in this instance transforming expressions of first-person predictive beliefs into expressions of intention. 30 a lie, Koch continues: "What in contrast cannot be false is the belief [Meinung] expressed by a sentence (Satz) of that kind if I actually think it. If I think that it seems to me as if it is snowing, then that is how it in fact seems to me. So it is not that certain propositions (Satze) are unipolar (einwertig) , but rather that certain of my beliefs are infallible. Truth points beyond the semantic into the doxastic and epistemic" ("ZW" 20). ("Was andererseits nicht falsch sein kann, ist die Meinung, wenn ich sie denn wirldich denkend vollziehe, die mit einem derartigen Satz ausgedriickt wird. Wenn ich denke, daB mir scheint, daB es schneit, dann scheint es mir tatsachlich so. Nicht gewisse Satze also sind einwertig, sondern in gewissen Meinungen bin ich unfehlbar. Die Wahrheit weist aus der Semantik hinaus ins Doxastische und Epistemische.") Besides the exegetical problem posed by Koch's two prima-facie different uses of Satz-which I have here translated as 'sentence' and as 'proposition'-as we have seen, the terms 'think', 'belief', and 'express' are multiply ambiguous, and understanding precisely what Koch has in mind by "infallibility" would require that we sort out the appropriate senses of the terms. But it seems plausible enough to read 'I think' as 'I believe' in the context "I think that it seems ... as if it is snowing"-I have excised 'to me', since it begs the question of subjectivity presently at issue -and 'in fact' (tatsachlich) as positing the truth of what is believed. Thus interpreted, Koch's illustrative example is just an instance of our (D1 *) analysans: "If I believe that it seems as if it is snowing, then it is true that it seems as if it is snowing"; that is, I cannot falsely believe that it seems as if it is snowing. 29 This is not to deny, of course, that there are truths about subjective states of affairs; for example, the judgement (of inner sense) that I am (here and now) thinking that S. But it is to insist that these, too, are objective truths, with respect to which I am in principle as fallible as with respect to any other truths about the world. 30 This is the expository linguistic convention adopted by Wilfrid Sellars. He defends the corresponding philosophical account of intentions in "Imperatives, Intentions, and the Logic of 'Ought''', Methodos, 8 (1956), pp. 228-68; "Thought and Action", in Keith Lehrer (ed.), Freedom and Determinism (New York, NY: Random House, 1966), pp. 105-39; "Actions and Events" ("A&E"), Nous, 7 (1973), pp. 179-202; and "Volitions Reaffirmed", in M. Brand and D. Walton (eds.), Action Theory (Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel, 1976), pp. 47-66.
85
Cartesian Certainty
Now, an utterance by means of which I express such a first-person predictive belief, e.g. "I will conlplete the essay before the deadline", is no different from any other objective truth-claim. What I believe about nlY future conducts and their consequences can turn out to be true or false. However reliable they may generally be, then, for better or worse such first-person predictive beliefs are entirely fallible. But what should we say about an utterance nlanifesting the corresponding intention; that is, "I shall complete the essay before the deadline"? Does it express a fallible belief or an infallible belief? The answer, of course, is that (given our suppositions) it does not express a belief at all. Expressions of beliefs are one thing; expressions of intentions another. Of course, one can also correctly say that I cannotfalsely believe what I express by my sincere utterance of "I shall complete the essay before the deadline"but there is an obvious sense in which it would be misleading to say that I am infallible with respect to such matters. It would be misleading precisely in its suggestion that what I express by such an utterance is my (trivially, automatically) justified beliefin (i.e. epistemic commitment to) a special sort of truth. What I express by a sincere utterance of "I shall complete the essay before the deadline" is not an epistemic commitment at all. What I express is a commitment to do something; namely, to complete the essay before the deadline. 31 I want to suggest that the 'seenls' operator of the epoche is best understood by analogy to such a 'shall' operator. The reason that I cannot falsely believe what I express by a sincere utterance of "There seems to be a bright warm noisy fire over there"-understood as "Seems[There is a bright warm noisy fire over there]"-is not that what I express by such an utterance is my (trivially, automatically) justified belief in a special sort of truth. What I express by a sincere utterance of "There seems to be a bright warm noisy fire over there", thus understood, is not an epistemic commitment at all. In this instance, however, it does not fail to be an epistemic commitment because it is, like an expressed intention, a non-epistemic commitment. Like all analogies, this one has a negative as well as a positive side. In the case of 'seems', what I express is not an epistemic commitment because, although it is in a sense "epistemic", it is not a commitment. An epistemic commitment, to put it brusquely, is a commitment to Gustificatorily defend) the objective truth of some proposition, and such a commitment to objective truth is ex hypothesi just what an epoche suspends. 31 Compare the relationship between "1 will complete the essay before the deadline" and "1 promise that 1will complete the essay before the deadline". By sincerely uttering the latter sentence 1 also express something that 1 cannot falsely believe, but, again, this is so not because 1 express a (trivially, automatically) justified belief in a special sort of truth, but because 1 do not express a belief, an epistemic commitment, at all. 1make a promise; that is, commit myself to act in certain ways.
86
Cartesian Certainty
If this is right, then, although a sincere utterance of "There seems to be a bright warm noisy fire over there" doubtless manifests (expresses(2») both the occurrence of a thought-episode-»8eems[There is a brigl1t warm noisy fire over there]«-and the occurrence of various sensations as well-let us call the complex occurrence consisting of such a thought-episode and suitably related sensory states a perceptual experience (of a bright warm noisy fire over there)-its speaker does not use it to express(l) his epistemic commitment to the .proposition that such a perceptual experience occurs, nor, of course, to any proposition representing the actual occurrence of a brigl1t warm noisy fire in his immediate environment. Understood as expressing a pure sceptical epoche, such an utterance, in other words, reports neither an objective nor a subjective state of affairs; that is, it does not report anything at all. But now we seem to have left 'seems'-judgements with no job to do at all. If such judgen1ents report neither objective nor subjective states of affairs, and are 110t used to express an infallible epistemic commitment to some special subjective truth, then what do I express by a sincere utterance of "There seems to be a bright warm noisy fire over there"? The answer, of course, is that I (the speaker) do not express(1) anything at all. The "action" sense of 'express' is c011cerned with commitments, and what we have posited is precisely that the 'seems'-operator suspends all epistemic commitments. My utterance indeed expresses, i.e. expresses(2)' something, and, indeed, something "subjective", namely my perceptual experience (= thought-episode cum sensations), but I don't express my perceptual experience-it's not even clear what that could mean-much less assert the proposition that I am having it. My uttering (or thinking) something of the form 'seems [P] " in other words, is not an instance of my saying (or judging) that anything is the case. It is, of course, an instance of Sellarsian thinking-outloud, broadly construed-"experiencing-out-Ioud" would perhaps be a more perspicuous label-b·ut here it is especially important to remember that thinkings-out-Ioud although indeed linguistic acts-both in the sense of being actualities and in the sense of being actualizations of dispositions-are not actions, although they can occur as elements of complex linguistic conducts which are actions, e.g. deliberating- or reasoning-out-loud, and that there can also be like-sounding social-linguistic (other-directed) actions, e.g. asserting, telling, warning, explaining, and the like. It is useful to contrast this with the case of a genuine perceptual judgement, in which a speaker is prepared simply to assert that there is a bright warm noisy fire over there, i.e. says (or judges) "There is a bright warm noisy fire over there". Such an utterance also expresses(2) its speaker's perceptual. 87
Ca rtesia n Certa inty
experience. That is, the occurrence of a perceptual experience of a bright warm noisy fire over there (= corresponding thought-episode cum sensations) will enter into the (causal) explanation of the speaker's readiness to make such an assertion. Furthermore, the occurrence of such a perceptual experience would itself in turn be explained by there actually being a bright warm noisy fire over there. And now we can add that, in this instance, the speaker actually commits himself to the correctness of that explanation. He expresses(l) his belief that there is a bright warm noisy fire over there-that is, his epistemic commitment to (justificatorily defend) the truth of that proposition-and thereby endorses an explanatory hypothesis; that is, advances an explanation of a perceptual experience-indeed, of the very perceptual experience which his utterance expresses(2). This explanatory role of perceptual judgements is doubtless what Peirce had in mind when he wrote that the "Perceptive Judgment" "is plainly nothing but the extremest case of the Abductive Judgement" (CPCSPv. 185).32 The foregoing argumentation has been directed at establishing only the limited conclusion that a sceptical epoche is not as such a step into subjectivity which arrives at a special minimal "indubitable" or "incorrigible" truth. To this end, I have undertaken to "isolate" the epocheby adopting the convenient expository fiction of a 'seems'-operator to represent the contents of such ordinary claims as "There seems to be a bright warm noisy fire (over there)" . The time has come, however, to step back from this useful philosophicalexpository pretence in favour of a more realistic account of the ordinary import of such claims. The thesis I wish to defend, to put the point briskly, is that a claim of the form 'There seems to be ...' is normally an "existential" instantiation of a claim of the form 'It seems (to me here now) as if ...' - i.e. a claim of the more specific form 'It seen1S (to me here now) as if there is ...' - which, in turn, is simply the generic version of the corresponding claim particularized to one or another of the sensory modalities; that is, a claim of the form 'It [looks, sounds, tastes, smells, feels] (to me here now) as if ...'. On this account, a 'seems'-claim in fact ordinarily does report something subjective, namely an ostensibleperceiving; that is, an experience which would be a perceiving if it were veridical (for, like its specifications 'seeing', 'hearing', etc., in its literal sense the generic term 'perceiving' is also a term for a successful conceptual activity). A speaker who advances such a claim reports a 32 Cf., from a 1903 series of lectures on Pragmatism, in CPCSP v. 157 ff.: "Abductive inference shades into perceptual judgment without any sharp line of demarcation between them; or, in other words, our first premisses, the perceptual judgments, are to be regarded as an extreme case of abductive inferences".
88
Cartesian Certainty
perceptual experience, but in a way which is non-committal about the perceptual modality in question (e.g. visual, auditory, gustatory, olfactory, tactile). And such a speaker also adverts to a possible explanation of the perceptual experience that he reports, an objective explanatory hypothesis to which, however, he suspends commitment and from which he withholds endorsement and assent. This proposal is a direct descendant and generalization of Sellars' wellknown account of 'looks'-idioms in "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind": [When] I say 'X looks green to me now' I am reporting the fact that my experience is, so to speak, intrinsically, as an experience, indistinguishable from a veridical one of seeing that x is green. Involved in the report is the ascription to my experience of the claim 'X is green'; and the fact that I make this report rather than the simple report' X is green' indicates that certain considerations have operated to raise, so to speak in a higher court, the question 'to endorse or not to endorse'. I may have reason to think that X n1ay not after all be green. ("EPM" #16, 145)
Thus, "in rough and ready terms": 'x looks red to S' has the sense of'S has an experience which involves in a unique way the idea that x is red and involves it in such a way that if this idea were true, and if S knew the circumstances were normal, the experience would correctly be characterized as a seeing that x is red'. ("EPM" #22, 151)
Earlier, I distinguished three aspects of a pure sceptical epoche expressed by an utterance, for example, of the form "Seems[x is red]": Such an utterance was taken to n1anifest the occurrence of a complex perceptual experience consisting of (1) some non-propositional sensations or sensory states suitably related to a propositional thought(-episode), »Seems[x is red]«, with (2) a propositional content, identical to that of the unmodifed thought »x is red«, and (3) an associated attitude, the suspension of epistemic commitment which is the hallmark of an epoche as such. In "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind" Sellars develops his account of 'looks' in connection with an exploration of the similarities and differences among three related situations: (a)
seeing that x, over there, is red;
(b)
its looking to one that x, over there, is red;
(c)
its looking to one as though there were a red object over there. (idem)
These situations, he continues, 89
Cartesian Certainty differ primarily in that (a) is so formulated as to involve an endorsement of the idea that x, over there is red, whereas in (b) this idea is only partially endorsed, and in (c) not at all. [I shall] refer to the idea that x, over there, is red as the common propositional content of these three situations ... The propositional content of these three experiences is, of course, but a part of that to which we are logically committed by characterizing them as situations of these three kinds. Of the remainder . . . part is a matter of the extent to which this propositional content is endorsed ... Let us call [the] residue the descriptive content. I can then point out that it is implied by my account that not only the propositional content but also the descriptive content of these three experiences may be identical. ("EPM" #22, 151-2)
Here too, then, we find the propositional content of a thought-episode along with its associated attitude; in Sellars' terms, the degree and scope of (epistemic) endorsement. And, as the balance of "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind" makes abundantly clear, what he calls"descriptive content" is just what we have been calling the (non-propositional) sensations or sensory states which, suitably related to the propositional thought-episode, go to make up a complete perceptual experience. 33 What is missing from this brief discussion, however, is what the "rough and ready" account of 'x looks red to S' makes clear; namely, that his account of the latter two ('looks') situations somehow makes reference to thefirst('sees') situation. To bring the point into sharp focus, it suffices to observe that a sincere utterance of 'X (over there) looks green to me now' contains an explicit reference to a perceiver or experiencer; that is, to "me". It is, on the face of it, subjective in a way in which a pure epoche, I have argued, is not. It is reasonable to conclude, then, that, on a proper analysis, a reference to the perceiver and his perceptual experience will not only enter into the account of the causal conditions of the occurrence of such a first-person 'looks' utterance, but will also be part of the account of its conceptual content. From this perspective, Sellars' proposal is initially plausible: 'X (over there) looks green' reports an ostensible seeing that x (over there) is green: 33 As is well known, "EPM" offers up a complex dialectic of historical, methodological, analytical, and theoretical considerations centred on what Sellars notoriously calls the "Myth of the Given". In particular, in addition to our present aims-to say something constructive about the nature of epoche and the notions of subjectivity and epistemic infallibility classically associated 'with it (although he does not put it in quite those terms)-Sellars is also concerned to develop schematic positive accounts of thoughts and sensations (sense impressions, sensory states); that is, of their proper ontological status, the terms in which they are characterized, and the ways in which they could originally come to be and now can be known. In particular, his desire to give a positive account of "the intrinsic character of the common descriptive content of [the] three experiences" ("EPM" #22, 152) explains his reluctance to introduce the notions of sensations or sensory states in the casual and largely non-committal manner we have adopted.
90
Cartesian Certainty An ostensible seeing is, roughly, an experience which would be a seeing if it were veridical, just as an ostensible memory is an experience which would be a remembering, if it were veridical. ("SK" 307)34 [The] suggestion I wish to make is, in its simplest terms, that the statement 'X looks green to Jones's differs from' Jones sees that x is green' in that whereas the latter both ascribes a propositional claim to Jones's experience and endorses it, the former ascribes the claim but does not endorse it. This is the essential difference between the two, for it is clear that two experiences may be identical as experiences, and yet one be properly referred to as a seeing that something is green, and the other merely as a case of something's lookinggreen. ("EPM" #16,145)
Working out the details of Sellars' proposal rapidly becomes fairly complicated. We need to take into account the specific manner in which an episode of seeing incorporates both a thinking and a suitably related sensing. We need to take into account the fact that seeing is, in Ryle's sense, an achievement which requires, among other things, the truth of its constituent thought. 35 As Sellars puts it, "in its literal sense 'seeing' is a term for a successful conceptual activity which contrasts with 'seeming to see' " C'SK" 339; cf. "EPM" #16, 145). And we need to give an account of the proper scope of a speaker's or thinker's epistemic comn1itment C'endorsement"). Not to make too heavy going of it, separating out the dimel1sion of commitment or endorsement, we can say that seeing a
91
Ca rtesia n Certa i nty that, since sensings are here posited to be non-conceptual (non-propositional, non-intentional) episodes, the fact that a sensing is, for example, a sensing of a
92
Cartesian Certainty
In contrast, when I sincerely utter 'It looks to me as if there is a
93
Cartesian Certainty
scratch the surface of the many uses of 'looks', and the first fact that we need to acknowledge is that a vast number of them are quite obviously not reports of visual experiences at all. The context "It looks as if ..." is particularly accomn10dating in this regard. Consider, for instance, "It looks as if it's going to be a wet winter; as if H. C. will run for the Senate; as if China will default on its World Trade Organization obligations; as if Fermat's Last Theorem has finally been proved, ...". Such remarks have no more to do with visual experiences than do the uses of 'see' in talk of seeing someone's dialectical point, seeing how to solve a thorny problem, or seeing that certain conclusions follow from given premises. In these contexts, 'looks' serves fundamentally to moderate epistemic commitment. Functionally, that is, 'It looks as if ...' is roughly equivalent to 'There are good, but inconclusive, reasons to believe that ...', reasons which need have no special relationship to concurrent visual experiences. (Analogous points hold, of course, for the generic 'seems'.) Narrowing the scope of the implicit suspension of endorsement hardly narrows the range of possibilities. An anin1al can look angry, hungry, tired, pregnant, or dangerous; a plant can look edible or poisonous; a puzzle can look easy or difficult to solve; a person can look frustrated, sceptical, satisfied, or convinced; and so on. Here we are indeed inclined to hold that visual experiences are relatively directly implicated in the situations registered by such remarks. We judge that the animal is tired or hungry, the person satisfied or sceptical, etc., by the way they look; that is, by the way they strike us when we look atthem. They make, we may say, a characteristic "visual impression". So these uses of 'looks', at least, signal that some concurrent visual experience is playing a significant epistemic role. Nevertheless, I think that we would be reluctant in these instances to say straightforwardly that a sincere utterance of "That dog looks angry" or "Your daughter looks frustrated" reports such a visual experience. While the explanatory schemata of Sellars' analysis can obviously be adapted to these cases, they seem more naturally to invite being characterized in terms of the notion of an interpretation rather than that of a report. To put the point metaphorically: in such instances there seems to be too great a distance between the hypothetical sensory etiology and the (epistemically guarded) propositional thought-»That dog is angry«; »Your daughter is frustrated«to speak of "reporting one's visual experience". Although certain sensations or sensings (sensory states) doubtless enter into both the etiology and the composition of the total perceptual experience, it is strained to characterize them in Sellars' terminology of "descriptive content". While the" descriptive 94
Cartesian Certainty
content" of an ostensible seeing of something red over there may arguably be held to include a visual sensation of red (or, perhaps, an "of-a-red-object visual sensing"), Sellars would (and should) be reluctant to speak of visualsensations of anger or frustration. 40 But once we have explicitly introduced the theme of interpretation, it should become clear that we are dealing here with differences of degree rather than of kind. We nlust not suppose, that is, that a perceptual experience, so to speak at the level of descriptive phenomenology, can be cleanly separated into a conce~tual and a non-conceptual element. Ex hypothesi, the propositional content of such an experience depends upon a determinate (non-cognitive, non-conceptual) sensory etiology. But a mome1lt's reflection on such ambiguous figures as the Jastrow duck-rabbit and the Necker cube should make it clear that, in one natural sense of the expression, the" descriptive content" of a perceptual experience, or what one might better call its "phenomenological content"-in Kant's terminology, the "image" (Bild; A120) produced by the "synthesis of apprehension in intu.ition" (A99 ff.), or "figurative synthesis" of the "productive imagination" (B151 ff.)-essentially depends upon the concepts through which the seen figure is thought. For, although I can in fact normally freely choose which "aspect" of an ambiguous figure (to use Wittgenstein's idiom) I actually see, plainly nothing cha1lges ill the way I am sensorily affected during a "gestalt-switch" from my seeing Jastrow's figure as a duck to my seeing it as a rabbit, and, similarly, nothing in the sensory stimulus changes when I shift from seeing aNecker cube as facing, so to speak "upwards to the left" to seeing it as facing" downwards to the right" . But, although neither the arrangement of marks on the page nor their projection on my retinas (what Kant calls the "mere receptivity of impressions", Al20 n. a) changes, it would be misleading to say that nothing visual about my visual experience changes. For, a collection of nlarks on the page looks different when seen as (depicting) a duck and when seen as (depicting) a rabbit, when seen as (depicting) a cube facing upwards to the left and when see1l as (depicting) a cube facing downwards to the right. The "percept" or "image" changes. In Wittgenstein's idiom, the aspect changes. But that is just to say that what is (ostensibly) seen changes, and, to anticipate the central point, the only way to specify what changes in such instances is by specifying what is (ostensibly) seen. This determinative role of the conceptual dimension of a perceptual experience (its propositional content) vis-a-vis its phenomenological content is 40 And talk of "of-an-angry-animal" or "of-a-frustrated-person" visual sensings seems even less helpful.
95
Cartesian Certainty
borne out by the fact that, as Sellars stresses, looks can be generic and determinable. Among the merits of his account of looks-claims, he writes, is that it explains how a necktie, for example, can look red to S at t, without looking scarlet or crimson or any other determinate shade of red. In short, it explains how things can have a merelygeneric look, a fact which would be puzzling indeed if looking red were a natural as opposed to an epistemicfact about objects. The core of the explanation, of course, is that the propositional claim involved in such an experience may be, for example, either the more determinable claim 'This is red' or the more determinate claim 'This is crimson'. ("EPM" #17,146)
That is, since the propositional content of a perceptual experience can consistently be framed in terms of generic or determinable concepts, the fact that a hen can look speckled, a leopard spotted, or a tiger striped without there being a specific number of speckles, spots, or stripes which the animal looks to have is no more mysterious than, in Sellars' words, "the fact that Scan believe that Cleopatra's Needle is tall, without its being true of some determinate number of feet that Sbelieves it to be that number of feet tall" ("EPM" #17, 146).41
The point of these observations is to emphasize that the phenomenological content of a perceptual experience is not the independent object of some form of non-conceptual awareness, an object which is then conceptually represented, adequately or inadequately, by a distinct propositional thoughtepisode. And to the extent that "suitably related sensations"-a "descriptive content" in Sellars' sense-not only enter into the etiology of such an experience but are also, so to speak, "bodily present" in the experience itself, they are so only as and by virtue of being (constitutive) elements or aspects of its phenomenological content. N evertl~eless, there is, as it were, no conceptual space at all between the phenomenological content and the propositional content of such an experience-and the propositional content of a perceptual experience always expresses a claim (hypothetical or endorsed) about the world. 42 41 A parallel example from Descartes (Meditation 6): A polygonal figure can be seen as manysided (and believed to have many sides) without being seen as (or believed to be), for instance, a chiliagon. It is unclear how Descartes himself would or could consistently account for the possibility of such generic and determinable looks. 42 Although he cites it in service of different philosophical ends, Koch recognizes this fact as well: "There are no primitive mental predicates and intentional acts and states can therefore be attributed to me only by means of indirect discourse about external objects ('de re' or 'de dicta') ... It is raining, let us say, and I am getting wet. What is my cognitive state? It is the perceptual belief that it is raining. There are no intrinsically mental descriptions of that state" ("LW" 76-7). (Cf. also Wittgenstein: "Das Vorstellungsbild ist das Bild, das beschrieben wird, wenn Einer seine Vorstellung beschreibt" (PI #367).)
96
Cartesian Certainty
It follows that, apart from its sensory modality (visual, auditory, tactile, etc.), everything reportable abollt a perceptual experience is contained in a specification of its propositional content, that is, in the report of a thought about the (objective) world of which, ex hypothesi, we are aware (if at all) through the faculty we have been calling inner sense, our "self-monitoring" capacity to respond with content-appropriate meta-thoughts to some thought-episodes more or less as they occur. The beliefs about our perceptual experiences expressed, for example, in 100ks-clain1s will consequently be no less and no more reliable than that faculty, and they will be infallible only if inner sense as such is infallible. That, however, is a thesis which we have not yet found any reason to adopt. On the contrary, we have been able to make do with what we have called the "minimal story of thoughts". That is, we have been able to construct a positive account of epoche and its unique mode of "infallibility" without having recourse to any version of the Cartesian idea that thoughts occur as epistemically self-disclosing states, much less as states of a non-physical (non-extended) substance, nor was any such assumption needed to extend that account to il1clude Sellars' correlative analysis of the epistemic status of looks-claims. On the account that we have endorsed, it is a contingent fact about us that we instantiate the modes of self-affection requisite for such a self-monitoring capacity to be aware of our thinkings at all. The reliable operation of inner sense, like that of our other passive faculties, is fundamentally a matter of natural causal relationships, and there is no reason to suppose that inner sense is any n10re immune to occasional disturbances and causal n1isfires than our various "outer" senses are. But don't we in fact regard and treat the expressed judgements of inner sense as infallible? At first glance Alston, for instance, seen1S to think so: If S tells us that he has the image of a snow-capped mountain before his mind's eye, that he feels relieved, or that he is thinking about the election, then, provided we are convinced that his words do straightforwardly express his beliefs, we take it without more ado that he is fully warranted in holding those beliefs. We would unhesitatingly brand as absurd a request for justification such as "Why do you believe that?", "What reason do you have for supposing that?", or "How do you know that?" (EJ 300)
More precisely, however, Alston's thesis is that we regard and treat a certain group of beliefs-beliefs about one's "cllrrent conscious states"; in his shorthand, Bs-as self-warranting; that is, as satisfying the principle [SW]
Every B is warranted just in virtue of its being a B. (EJ296) 97
Cartesian Certainty On his view, we both are defacto committed to [SW]-i.e. it accurately represents our actual epistemic practice-and should be committed to it, so to speak dejure -i.e. we're justified in accepting it. 43 Alston's discussion of which of one's beliefs are Bs, beliefs "about current conscious states", is complex and problematic in various ways. What counts as a conscious state, he proposes, is a "mode of consciousness" or "way of being conscious", in his shorthand, a C (EJ 296). But "ways of being conscious" can themselves be characterized in a variety of ways, not all of which yield self-warranting beliefs. What's required, Alston suggests, is that a conscious state, C, be characterized in terms of its "intrinsic content" or "intrinsic character" (EJ298): 'B' is to be defined in terms of a kind of concept rather than a kind of state . . . Our chain of definitions should go as follows: (14)
C-a way of being conscious.
(15)
I-concept-a concept of the intrinsic nature of some C.
(16)
B-a belief of a person that he is currently in a certain C, where C is conceptualized by an I-concept. (El299)
It is for the justification of such Bs, he contends, that we do and should require nothing over and above their being Bs. This is not the occasion to pursue the question of what Alston means by the "intrinsic nature" of a "way of being conscious". It would probably be difficult indeed to arrive at any clear and useful general answer. For our purposes, however, it suffices if judgements of inner sense belong among what he calls Bs, and that seems plausible enough. While perhaps not all one's thought-episodes qualify as "conscious states", one is at least conscious of those registered by inner sense, and it is hard to imagine what could count as a characterization of the "intrinsic nature" or "intrinsic content" of a propositional thought-episode other than a specification of its propositional or conceptual content persee If Alston is correct, then, there is a case to be made for the claim that our judgements of inner sense, and afortiori the reports of 43 Well, that's his official view in the text of ch. 11 of Epistemic Justification, "Self-Warrant: A Neglected Forn1 of Privileged Access". In ch. 4, "Concepts of Epistemic Justification" , and ch. 9, "An Internalist Externalism", however, Alston explicitly defends an "adequate-grounds" conception of justification which is prima facie incompatible with the possibility of self-warrant, and in the supplementary notes to ch. 11 (cf. n. G) he in fact acknowledges the incompatibility and so rejects the thesis that Bs are self-warranted, offering as a possible counter example"a case in which a person is abnorn1al enough to make wild guesses as to what conscious states he currently enjoys" (EJ315).
98
Cartesian Certainty perceptual experiences expressed by our 'looks'-claims, are self-warranting and hence necessarily epistemically justified whenever we candidly and spontaneously make them. But, whatever our ultim.ate verdict regarding that claim turns out to bequestions regarding the nature and modes of epistemic warrant or justification will exercise us in due time-as Alston himself recognizes (cf. EJ291-2), the fact that a belief is self-warranting (assuming it is a fact) does 110t imply that the belief is infallible; that is, that its content cannot be falsely believed. In fact, Alston's own case for accepting and adopting the principle [SW] with respect to Bs is that we have good reasons to take Bs to be "almost always" true-but only in the sense that it is "extremely difficult" to find any actual case in which a B is shown to be false. There is, he writes, "typically" no independent alternative to simply taking the believer's word for it (EJ309). That sort of case for "self-warrant", indeed, we can even improve upon, but only if we understand inner sense on the fallibilist model of causal selfaffection. For, while others can certainly formulate (observationally and inferentially) well-grounded meta-level judgements about my occurrent thoughts, only I can respond to some of those thought-episodes with metathought-episodes that are then expressed in my first-person judgements of inner sense. My position vis-a-vis my own thought-episodes is, so to speak, causally "privileged", and, while that explains both why requests that I specify my grounds or reasons or evidence for believing that I am (here and now) thinking this or that are usually out of place and why it is ordinarily reasonable for others to accept my corresponding judgements of inn.er sense, it also leaves room for the sort of breakdowns of normal causal relationships that can result in various forms of aphasia, agnosia, or other disturbances of an otherwise generally reliable ability to report some of my own thoughts and perceptual experiences. I conclude, then, that the only sort of "infallibility" in1plicated in 'looks'claims (and, correlatively, 'sounds'-, 'tastes'-, 'smells'-, 'feels'-, and ordinary generic'seems'-claims) is the impossibility of false belief resulting from the suspension of belief perse; that is, the withholding of epistemic con1mitment or endorsement from propositions (explanatory hypotheses) regarding the objective state of affairs causally responsible for the reported subjective perceptual experience. And while such first-person experiential reports, in turn, are arguably generally reliable and perhaps even "self-warranting", we have found no reason to regard them as (in the relevant sense) infallible. Like all subjective judgements, reports of perceptual experiences rest on exercises of Ol.lr "self-monitoring" capacity for inner sense, and our faculty of inne~ sense, 99
Cartesian Certainty however reliable, is ultimately a matter of contingent causal relationships and hence no more a source of infallible beliefs than is any of our "outer" senses. In short, what is "infallible" is not subjective, and what is subjective is not infallible. Neither epoche nor inner sense is a royal road to a realm of special "thin" truths. Cartesian certainty, in short, is and remains what it always was, an epistemic chimera. 44 44 At this point it might be objected that although I've dealt critically with various species of cogito that still leaves sum as a possible locus of Cartesian certainty. Thus Koch: "[My] act of perceiving has to be a spatio-temporal event itself, and I have to know this ... a priori and infallibly. I may express this knowledge by the words: I (whoever I may be objectively) am now (as I think or say this, whatever time it may be objectively) here (whatever place it may be objectively). I am now herethis is a sentence which David Kaplan has analyzed as a logical truth, i.e., as a truth of the logic of indexicals. What this sentence expresses may be called the enriched Cartesian evidence" ("LW" 77). But if "I am here now" does express a logical truth, then while it is perhaps in some sense known "a priori and infallibly"-for it is, of course, impossiblejalsely to believe any logical (or analytic) truth-it is surely in no useful or interesting sense evidence. For, logical truths imply only other logical truths, and none of them implies anything at all about the world. The judgement consequently cannot in principle play any justificatory role in reasoning about (objective) matter-offactual claims, and it is only for such claims that evidence is ever needed or apposite.
100
Immediate Knowledge: 3 The New Dialectic of Givenness
Knowledge is the conformity of the object and the intellect. Averroes, Destructio Destructionum
I take the term 'immediate knowledge' from the title of William P. Alston's essay, "What's Wrong with Immediate I<nowledge?", 1 but the first thing to say about it is that, however traditional the term might be, itis not particularly felicitous. On the most natural interpretation of the term, immediate knowledge is underivedknowledge; that is, knowledge that has not been arrived at by being, for instance, inferred from other knowledge. This notion of immediacy concerns the de facto origin of bits of knowledge, how someone first comes to know this or that, and is non-committal regarding normative epistemic questions. But that is not what Alston means by 'immediate knowledge' . His notion of immediacy is ab initio normative. Immediate knowledge, he tells us, is knowledge that does not depend for its status as ktl0wledge on other knowledge (EJ 57). This notion of immediacy concerns the dejure epistemic status of bits of knowledge, e.g. what further conditions must be satisfied in order for someone's believing truly that-p to count as her knowing that-p, and is as such non-committal regarding how the believer in fact originally arrived at her belief. Immediate knowledge in this sense might better be called epistemically independent knowledge. Set side-by-side in this way, it seems clear enough that the two notions are conceptually distinct, but, as the history of epistemology teaches us, it is unfortunately both easy and tempting to confuse them, paradigmatically by arguing fallaciously from the plausible principle that where there is derived 1
Repr. as essay 3, pp. 57-81, of Alston, EJ.
Immediate Knowledge
knowledge there must also be underived knowledge to the conclusion that where there is derived knowledge, there must also be epistemically independent knowledge. In due course, we shall see whether Alston succumbs to this temptation. Meanwhile, however, I shall adopt his official usage. In what follows, that is, the expression 'in1mediate knowledge' will have the sense of epistemically independent knowledge. When I am explicitly concerned with de ftcto origins, I shall speak of 'underived' knowledge. Assuming that knowledge will be some species of justified true belief, Alston proposes to explain immediate knowledge in terms of immediately justified belief: (I)
S is mediately justified in believing that p-S is justified in believing that p by virtue of sonle relation this belief has to some other justified belief(s) ofS.
(II)
S is immediately justified in believing that p-S is justified in believingthat p by virtue of something other than some relation this belief has to some other justified belief(s) of S. (EJ 57)
Depending on just what one makes of "S is ... justified in believing that-p", it may be possible for someone to be both mediately and immediatelyjustified in believing certain propositions, for neither (I) nor (II) explicitly says that S is justified in believing that-p only by virtue of this or that. We shall have to see whether this is a possibility that Alston is prepared to acknowledge. The notion of immediately justified belief that Alston proposes to discuss, however, in fact differs from that formulated in terms of (II) above in at least two ways. The first modification arises from the fact that Alston ostensibly goes out of his way not to prejudge certain questions centred on the concepts of justification and reliability. Some "reliabilist" epistemologists treat a belief's resulting from reliable beliefforming processes (henceforth: "resulting from RBF processes") as a species of its being justified; others, as its possessing a potentially-knowledge-conferring epistemic virtue distinct from and, indeed, alternative to justification. Rather than taking an explicit stand on such matters, Alston elects to introduce a (rather barbarous) term of art, 'epistemization' : [An] "epistemizer" will be what converts true belief into knowledge, perhaps subject to .some further condition for avoiding Gettier counterexamples. Justification and reliability will be two leading candidates for the role of epistemizer. (EJ 58)
This first modification, however, immediately begets a second; for, although we typically speak of both beliefs and believers as being justified, 102
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only beliefs, but not believers, get epistemized. Hence, what Alston proceeds to characterize on the model of (I) and (II) is not "S is (im)mediately epistemized in believing that-p-which is prima-facie ill-formed-but rather" S's belief that-p is (im)mediately epistemized". Thus: (Ie)
S's belief that-p is mediately epistemized-S's belief that-p is epistemized by virtue of some relation this belief has to some other epistemized belief(s) of S,
(lIe)
S's belief that-p is immediately epistemized-S's belief that-p is epistemized by virtue of something other than some relation this belief has to some other epistemized belief(s) of S.
Immediate epistemization, says Alston, is a "wastebasket category", since it "embraces any form of epistemization that does not involve relations to other epistemized beliefs of the same subject" (El59). There's a lot going on in these opening moves, and not all of it is as neutral and innocent as it might seem. To begin with, if justification and reliability are two distinct candidates for the role of epistemizer, then resultingfrom REF processes obviously cannot be a species of justification. On the other hand, if resulting from RBFprocesses is regarded as one possible form of justification, then someone's being justified in believing some proposition apparently cannot be identified, as it traditionally has been, with her having adequate reasons, grounds, orevidence for what she believes. And if we nevertheless do insist on that traditional equivalence, then the claims
and
(JB)
S is justified in believing that-po
(BJ)
S's belief that-p is justified.
will no longer be equivalent; for, S's belief that-p can then be justified by virtue of its resulting from REF processes without S herself having reasons, grounds, or evidence for believing that-p. We have, in short, an inconsistent triad: (El)
A belief that results from RBF processes is (prima-facie) justified.
(E2)
S is justified in believing that-p iff S has adequate reasons or evidence for her belief.
(E3)
S is justified in believing that-p iff S's belief that-p is justified.
(E 1), (E2), and (E3) cannot all be correct, and so, sooner or later, Alston will have to step back from his talk of "epistemization" and take a stand on the question of which of these principles to reject. 103
Immediate Knowledge
An epistemological internalist, for instance, will want to deny (E1). There are various versions of internalism-later we shall examine some of them in detail-but one interesting view both explicitly accepts (E3) and interprets (E2) as the requirement that someone is justified in believing some proposition only if she is, as Sellars puts it, appropriately situated in "the logical space of reasons, of justifying and being able to justify what one says" ("EPM" #36, 169). This internalist view presupposes what I shall call epistemic proceduralism: the thesis that the notion of a state of beingjustified, predicable of both believers and beliefs, rests on and is to be elucidated in terms of the notion of a practice or activity of justifying, which can be ascribed only to believers, but not to beliefs. The grammatical unavailability of the form "8 is epistemized in believing that-p", we should notice, tacitly loads the dice against epistemic proceduralism. Shortly we shall have ample occasion to return to these, and related, themes. First, however, we need a bit more stage-setting. What Alston proposes to defend, he tells us, is the possibility of "wholly immediate knowledge" (El 60). His correlative critical efforts consequently have as their targets only arguments that are directed against any sort of immediate epistemization and immediate knowledge. In keeping with this restriction I shall even forgo considering an important argument to the effect that wherever an immediate justification for a belief is defeasible we can be (sufficiently) justified in the belief only if we are justified in believing that no defeating circumstances obtain. Since there are putative immediate justifications that do not seem to have this prima facie character, for example, my justification for supposing that I feel tired now, or for supposing that 2 + 3 = 5, this argument, even if successful, would not rule out all immediate knowledge. (EJ 61-2)
What may strike us here is how readily Alston abandons talk of epistemization. In the light of the considerations we have just been surveying, the reason is clear: The specific argument which he proposes to forgo discussing cannot be coherently formulated in terms of epistemization. The notion of a person's being justified in believing (or, as he here curiously puts it, in "supposing") this or that seems to be one that Alston ultimately cannot do without. We shall consequently also need to make a detour through some of his other writings in order to command a clearer view of what he in fact understands under the rubric 'justification' . We can meanwhile get a better picture of what Alston is after in his defence of immediate knowledge by examining what he calls some "tempting but misdirected arguments that turn out to hit some other target instead" (El62). Arguments which undertake to demonstrate the impossibility of 104
Immediate Knowledge
immediate knowledge by criticizing the idea that immediately epistemized beliefs must be certain, infallible, incorrigible, or indubitable at best rule out only a restricted subset of cases, but not the possibility of immediate epistemization per see Inlmediate epistemization may sometimes issue in some species of certainty-Alston is here non-committal on the question-but it need not do so. Two further groups of "misdirected arguments" are more interesting. Alston desclibes them as: (a) arguments directed against accounts of immediate knowledge which presuppose that a belief's being immediately epistemized is incompatible with its (also) being subject to assessment in terms of reasons or evidence, and (b) arguments directed against accounts of immediate knowledge which presuppose that a belief can be immediately epistemized only if it in no way depends on other knowledge of the same slLbject (i.e. can be held without the subject's knowing anything else) (EJ63-4). Since he has already renlarked that "putative mediate epistemizers" include "having adequate evidence for the belief in question" (EJ 59), the import of (a) seems to be that a belief indeed could in principle be both mediately and imnlediately epistemized. The apparent import of (b), on the other hand, is to separate the question of epistemic independence from what we might call the question of epistemic solipsism. Sellars, for instance, characterizes traditionalfoundationalism as the idea that there is, indeed must be, a structure of particular matter of fact such that (a) each fact can not only be non-inferentially known to be the case, but presupposes no other knowledge either of particular matter of fact, or of general truths; and (b) such that the noninferential knowledge of facts belonging to this structure constitutes the ultimate court of appeals for all factual claims-particular and general-about the world. ("EPM" #32, 164)
Requirement (a) here is conjunctive. We can separate it into
and
(a1)
one can non-inferentially know each (foundational) fact to be the case;
(a2)
that one knows (a foundational) fact to be the case does not presuppose that one has any other (matter-of-factual) knowledge, particular or general.
A bit of knowledge is epistemically solipsistic whenever it satisfies (a2). In principle, that is, an epistemically solipsistic bit of knowledge, say that-q, could be some subject's sole bit of knowledge. She could blOW that-q without knowing anything else about the world. As we shall see, Sellars himself rejects (a2), but accepts versions of both (al) and (b). 105
Irrlmediate Knowledge
The fact that a bit of knowledge, e.g. that-r, satisfies (al) may even turn out to imply that the subject knows a great deal about the world, and this is so whether we interpret Sellars' notion of "non-inferential" knowledge as knowledge which is (merely) underived-Sellars surely intends it to be at least that-or knowledge which is epistemically independent. For, Alston, at least, would evidently have us believe that it is one thing to say that a subject who knows that-r must also know many other things about the world, and another to say that her knowledge that-r depends for its status as knowledge on other things that she knows; that is, that what "epistemizes" her true belief that-ris its relation to some of her other "epistemized" beliefs. Sellars goes on to ren1ark that: It is important to note that I characterized the knowledge of fact belonging to this [hypothetical foundational] stratum as not only noninferential, but as presupposing no knowledge of other matter of fact, whether particular or general. It might be thought that this is a redundancy, that knowledge (not belief or conviction, but knowledge) which logically presupposes knowledge of other facts must be inferential. ("EPM" #32, 164)
But that, he goes on to say, would be a mistake. It is, in fact, one classical form of what he notoriously calls the "Myth of the Given". I cite these passages prin1arily to highlight certain analogies with our present question. It might be thought that the possibility of underived knowledge guarantees the possibility of epistemically independent knowledge-or, conversely, that if there can be no "immediately episten1ized" beliefs then (paradoxically) all knowledge must be derived knowledge. One consequence of the leading thesis of procedllralism, however, is that this is also a mistake; that is, that the idea of epistemically independent knowledge is no less a myth than that of epistemically solipsistic knowledge, for, whatever it might in detail require, the practice or activity of justifying one of one's claims or convictions at least involves some sort of appeal to other things that one believes; that is, to what are (or are taken to be) grounds or reasons for believing what one does. It is in fact in Sellars' work that Alston also finds his first potentially viable candidate for an argument in support of the conclusion that there cannot be any immediate knowledge, the "level-ascent" argument: According to [the "level-ascent"] argument, when we consider any putative bit of immediate knowledge, we find that the belief involved really depends for its episten1ization on some higher level reasons that have to do with its epistemic status, with the reliability of its mode of formation, or with what it is that is supposed to epistemize the belief. (EJ64) 106
Inlmediate Knowledge
Sellars himself originally frames his view in terms of the epistemic authority of "tokens" which "express observational knowledge", where the term 'tokens' subsumes both public utterances and occurrent thought-episodes. His point of departure is a purely reliabilist account: An overt or covert token of 'This is green' in the presence of a green iten1 ... expresses observational knowledge if and only if it is a manifestation of a tendency to produce overt or covert tokens of 'This is green'-given a certain set-if and only if a green object is being looked at in standard conditions. ("EPM" #35, 167)
But this, he continues, won't do as it stands. That an utterance n1anifest such a reliable differential response disposition (an RDRD, as Robert Brandom likes to call it2) may be a necessary condition for the expression of observational knowledge, but Sellars insists that it is not sufficient. The fundamental difficulty concerns the normative character of epistemic discourse: The essential point is that in characterizing an episode or a state as that of knowing, we are not giving an empirical description of that episode or state; we are placing it in the logical space of reasons, of justifying and being able to justify what one says. ("EPM" #36, 169)
We need, that is, to provide an account of the epistemic authority of tokens which defacto manifest an RDRD in this way or, more generally, result from the operation of RBF processes. And Sellars concedes that there is a sense in which a purely reliabilist account allowsfor a notion of correctness suitable to ground that authority: Clearly, on this account the only thing that can ren10tely be supposed to constitute such authority is the fact that one can infer the presence of a green object from the fact that someone n1akes this report. [The] correctness of a report does not have to be construed as the rightness of an action. A report can be correct as being an instance of a general mode of behavior which, in a given linguistic community, it is reasonable to sanction and support. ("EPM" #35, 167-8)
In his magnum opus Making It Explicit, for instance, Brandom suggests that such correctness is indeed a sufficient basis for knowledge ascriptions: Suppose that Monique has been trained reliably to discriminate hornbeams by their leaves. As a result . . . she is often disposed to respond to the visibility of leaves of the right sort by noninferentially reporting the presence of a hornbeam. She understands what it means to claim that something is a hornbeam and . . . actually comes to 2
Not to be confused with R2D2, the feisty little droid of the Star Wars films.
107
Immediate Knowledge believe that there is a hornbeam present. She may still be uncertain of her discriminatory capacity long after she has in fact become reliable. In such a situation she may have a true belief that there is a hornbeam in front of her, yet be completely unable to justify that claim ... and even deny that she is a reliable noninferential reporter of hornbean1s. Yet. . . it can be entirely in order for one who does take her to be a reliable reporter of them, not only to come to believe that there is a hornbeam present on the basis of her report, but to cite her report (at least deferentially) as what warrants that belief. This is treating the claim as authoritative in just the way that is required for knowledge. (MIE 219)
Brandom's final remark here is interestingly ambiguous. On the third-person interpretation, we are evidently entitled to conclude that someone who both (correctly) takes Monique to be a reliable reporter of hornbeams (on the basis of his acquaintance with her defacto successful track record in reporting their presence) and cites her present report as warranting his belief that there is presently a hornbeam in front of her (thereby) knows that there is a hornbeam in front of her. It is not entirely clear, however, whether Brandom would be willing to draw the stronger first-person conclusion that when Monique thus spontaneously judges (correctly) that there is a hornbeam in front of her, she herself knows that there is a hornbeam in front of her. 3 In contrast, it is absolutely clear that Sellars would not accept that conclusion: "[To] be the expression of knowledge, a report must not only have authority, this authority must in some sense be recognized by the person whose report it is" ("EPM" #35,168): Now it might be thought that there is something obviously absurd in the idea that before a token [of 'This is green'] uttered by, say, Jones could be the expression of observational knowledge, Jones would have to know that overt verbal episodes of this kind are reliable indicators of the existence, suitably related to the speaker, of green objects. I do not think that it is. Indeed, I think that something very like it is true. ("EPM" #36, 168)
3 In his "Study Guide" to a recently released edition of Sellars' EPM (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997) Brandon1 is slightly less coy about the matter. Instead of a mildly ambiguous assertion, we get a series of questions, presumably intended to be rhetorical, as a gloss on the remark that Sellars' strong internalism "perhaps goes too far" (157): "Why isn't it enough that the attributor of knowledge know that the reporter is reliable, that the attributor of knowledge endorse the inference from the reporter's responsive disposition noninferentially to apply the concept red to a thing's (probably) being red? Why should the reporter herself have to be able to offer the inferential justification for her noninferential report?" (159). In contrast, as we shall see shortly, I am convinced not only that these questions are genuine rather than rhetorical but also that they in fact have Sellarsian answers.
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Imnlediate Knowledge
This is Sellars' strong internalism. Ex hypothesi, Monique fails to satisfy just this condition. Her reports in the presence of hornbeams may be authoritative, and so correctly be treated by others as authoritative, but Monique herself gives them no special credence. It is, Alston notes, precisely Sellars' strong internalism that stands in the way of a purely reliabilist account of knowing, and hence, ultin1ately, in the way of immediate knowledge. On Sellars' view, "one's belief counts as knowledge only if one knows something about the epistemic status of that belief, viz., that it counts as a reliable sign of the fact believed" (El66). This move, Alston observes, could be used against any claim to immediate knowledge. Sellars' proximate critical target, in fact, is not epistemic independence but rather epistemic solipsism: [The] view I am defending requires . . . that no tokening by S now of 'This is green' is to count as 'expressing observational knowledge' unless it is also correct to say of S that he now knows the appropriate fact of the form X is a reliable symptorn of Y, namely that ... utterances of 'This is green' are reliable indicators of the presence of green objects in standard conditions of perception. ("EPM" #37,169) The point I wish to make now, however, is that if [this] is true, then it follows, as a matter of simple logic, that one could not have observational knowledge of any fact unless one knew many other things as well. ("EPM" #36, 168)
His argument, however, plainly implies the stronger conclusion; namely, that an instance of observational knowledge depends for its status as knowledge on other things being known by the same subject: For if the authority of the report 'This is green' lies in the fact that the existence of green items appropriately related to the perceiver can be inferred from the occurrence of such reports, it follows that only a person who is able to draw this inference, and therefore who has not only the concept green, but also the concept of uttering 'This is green'-indeed, the concept of certain conditions of perception, those which would correctly be called 'standard conditions'-could be in a position to token 'This is green' in recognition of its authority. ("EPM" #35, 168)
While this does not yet exactly say that what"epistemizes" S's true belief that something perceptually present is green is its relation to some of her other "epistemized" beliefs, it obviously comes very close to doing so. If we now ask precisely what, on Sellars' view, does "episten1ize" S's belief, we encounter what Alston calls the "level-ascent" argument. Central to Sellars' view is the internalist conviction that the mere fact that S's belief manifests an RDRD or results from an REF process does not suffice 109
Immediate Knowledge
to "epistemize" it; that is, does not suffice for it to count as an instance of (observational) knowledge. Rather, S must be adequately justified in believing what she does, and, in first approximation, this requires that she have reasons for believing it which she recognizes as reasons for believing it. In Sellars' terminology, it requires that she tokens 'This is green' "in recognition of its authority". That authority, however, is an instance of what Sellars elsewhere 4 calls "trans-level credibility" . In "The Structure of Knowledge"5 he offers the example of a perceivernamed, like so many of his protagonists, 'Jones'-who expresses his noninferential perceptual belief that there is an apple in front of him by candidly and spontaneously uttering 'Lo! Here is a red apple.' The epistemic authority of this report, Sellars argues, "can be traced to thefact that Jones has learned how to use the relevant words in perceptual situations" ("SK" ii. 35-7, 324). His first observations parallel the third-person conclusion regarding Brandom's Monique: If we were to overhear [Jones], and if we had reason to believe that [no] countervailing situations obtain, we would be justified in reasoning as follows. Jones has thought-out-loud 'Lo! Here isa red apple' (no countervailing conditions obtain); So, there is good reason to believe that there is a red apple in front of him. Note that although this is an inferential justification of our belief that there is a red apple in front of Jones, it is a special kind of inference. It has the form: The thought that-p occurs to Jones in a certain context and manner; So it is reasonable to believe that-po The same proposition, that-p, is mentioned in both the premise and the conclusion. But the first n1ention concerns the fact of its occurrence as apropositionalevent in a context to which the basic features of language learning are relevant. From this premise, the inference is drawn that the proposition in question is one which it is reasonable to believe. ("SK" ii. 39, 325)
The key point is that one indispensable element of learning to use observational terms in perceptual contexts is the acquisition of the appropriate
4 Originally in "Science, Sense Impressions, and Sensa: A Reply to Cornman", Review of Metaphysics, 25 (1971), pp. 391-447. 5 Sellars, "SK". As is Sellars' custom, the three component lectures- I. "Perception", II. "Minds", and III. "Epistemic Principles"-are divided into numbered paragraphs. I consequently accompany citations by page number with roman + arabic numeral citations to lecture and paragraph(s).
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Immediate Knowledge
contextually reliable responsive propensities. To classify Jones's spontaneous utterance 'Lo! Here is a red apple' as a thinking-out-Ioud-and, specifically, a thinking-out-loud that there is a red apple in front of him-rather than, for example, an instance of babbling, parroting, mentioning, or (theatrical) roleplaying, is inter alia to regard it as a manifestation of the relevant differential response dispositions, and so, assuming the absence of countervailing conditions (e.g. realistic wax fruit, botanical holograms, sodium lamps, tinted contact lenses, psychedelic drugs in Jones's bloodstream), as evoked by the perceptual presence of a red apple. As Sellars observes, the justificatory argument here is conducted at a metalevel vis-it-vis Jones's original perceptual judgement (i.e. his spontaneous thought, whether silent or manifested, that there is a red apple in front of him). That is, the proposition that there is a red apple (over there) is mentioned in both the crucial premise and conclusion of that argument, in the former as the content of a spontaneous cognitive-linguistic event and in the latter as (thereby) qualified for epistemic endorsement. Sellars' strong internalist thesis is that Jones's own justification for believing that there is a red apple in front of him also involves such "level ascent": Let us now look at [our example] from the standpoint of Jones himself ... [To] be fully a n1aster of his language, Jones must know these samefacts about what is involved in learning to use perceptual sentences in perceptual contexts. Thus, Jones too must know that other specifiable things being equal, the fact that a person says 'Lo! Here is a red apple' is good reason to believe that he is indeed in the presence of a red apple. Thus, Jones, too, can reason: I just thought-out-loud 'Lo! Here is a red apple' (no countervailing conditions obtain); So, there is good reason to believe that there is a red apple in front of me. Of course, the conclusion of this reasoning is not the thinking involved in his original perceptual experience. Like all justification arguments, it is a higher-order thinking. He did not originally inftrthat there is a red apple in front of him. Now, however, he is inferring from the character and content of his experience that it is veridical and that there is good reason to believe that there is indeed a red apple in front of him. (" SK" ii. 40-1,325-6)
Alston is not happy. This line of argument explains well enough the way in which Sellars would cash out the claim that the epistemic status of tokenings which "express observational knowledge" depends on their tokeners possessing other bits of knowledge. What it does not adequately explain, Alston suggests, is why one should accept the internalist view that a person is justified in 111
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believing what she does only if she has adequate reasons for believing it. "The author just lays it down", he complains (EJ 66). And he proceeds to insinuate that Sellars is, or at least comes very close to, begging the question: Well, if it is essential to the epistemic justification of a belief that the believer have adequate reason for her belief, then there can be no immediate justification, and, if justification is necessary for knowledge, no immediate knowledge. But unless that clain1 is itself defended in some way, it is too close to the question at issue to advance the discussion. It is very close indeed; the principle of justification through reasons alone is precisely what the partisan of immediate knowledge is denying. For to have reasons for a belief is to have other knowledge or justified belief that supports the belief in question. And immediate justification is justification for which that is not required. (EJ69-70)
We clearly need to ask, then, whether we can find or construct any positive case both for internalism in general and for Sellars' strong brand of internalism in particular. Before doing so, however, I want to devote some additional scrutiny to Alston's critical remarks. And the first thing to notice in that regard is that talk of "epistemization" has once again entirely vanished in favour of talk of justification. It is consequently high time to ask how Alston stands vis-a-vis our earlier inconsistent triad: (El)
A belief that results from RBF processes is (prima-facie) justified.
(E2)
S is justified in believing that-p iff S has adequate reasons or evidence for her belief.
(E3)
S is justified in believing that-p iff S's belief that-p is justified.
and when we do, it seems clear enough, at least, that he is inclined to accept (E I). Examining the ren1ainder of his critical discussion of Sellars' views will help us sort out what he wou.1d say about (E2) and (E3). Alston's next observation, in fact, is that Sellars' strong internalism is rooted in a form of what we have called proceduralism: Sellars is thinking of epistemic justification in general as consisting of, or requiring, the capacity of the subject to produce adequate reasons for supposing that it is reasonable to believe the proposition justified. (EJ70)
"But why", he continues, "should we suppose that? We frequently take ourselves to know things with respect to which we have no such capacity" (ibid.). Whether or not this last remark is correct obviously depends on what we're to understand by Alston's phrase "adequate reasons for supposing t1).at it is reasonable to believe" some proposition. On one reading, at least, this is a very 112
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weak constraint, since any unconfuted prima-facie reason for believing a proposition arguably renders it to some extent reasonable to believe it and so is arguably an adequate reason for supposing that it is, to that extent, reasonable to believe. But even if Alston is correct, the fact that we sometimes take ourselves to k110W things for which we are unable to produce such"adequate reasons" plainly does not imply that we do know those things. As we have seen, Sellars' own general formulation of internalism-that in . order to count as an instance of knowing, an episode or state must be suitably situated in "the logical space of reasons, of justifying and being able to justify what one says" ("EPM" #36, 169)-is considerably less specific and proceduralist only by implication. On his full view, however, as his concrete examples confirm, justificatory practices are a matter of explicit reasoning, and Alston is thus well within his rights to represent Sellars as requiring of knowers a capacity actually to cite justificatory grounds and to engage in such reasoning regarding what is known. Rather than critically engaging the view directly, however, Alston proceeds to suggest two diagnostic explanations of why and how Sellars came to hold it. According to the first of these, Sellars has succumbed to what Alston suggests is a common confusion: It is tempting to suppose that Sellars has fallen victim to the pervasive confusion between the activity ofjustifying a belief-showing the belief to be reasonable, credible, or justified-and a belief's beingjustified, where this is some kind of epistemic state or condition of the believer vis-a.-vis that belief, rather than something he is or might be doing. There are enough locutions that are ambiguous between these two to provide a spawning ground for the confusion ... One who has fallen into the confusion will realize, of course, that we can't require S to have actually gone through the activity of justifying B in order to be justified in accepting B. But if still in the toils of the confusion, he is likely to take it as obvious that at least S must be capable of justifying B in order to be justified in accepting B. (E170-1)
What is fundamentally in dispute, however, is not a distinction between two states that might be predicated of a belief, nan1ely its being justified and its having been shown to be justified, but rather the question of proceduralism, and that is a thesis regarding the relationships between something predicable of a belief, namely its being justified, and something predicate of its believer, namely her being justified in believing it. The fundamental proceduralist conviction is that what in the first instance are justified or unjustified are the conducts ofpersons. Believing a proposition is, broadly speaking, something a person does, an epistemic conduct, and thus something that a person may be justified or unjustified in doing. A person's beliefis then justified or unjustified in so far 113
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and to the extent that the person is justified or unjustified in believing it, and that will be so just to the extent that she is able to justify her believing it. It is these two notions that are explicitly separated out in (E3). As we have seen, Alston does not explicitly separate them-among other things, his original decision to speak in terms of "epistemization" grammatically inhibits him from doing so-but the critical passage we have recently cited might be interpreted as indicating one stand that he could take on the matter. For, it begins by speaking of a belief's being justified as "some kind of epistemic state or condition of the believer vis-a-vis that belief" , and that may well suggest that he accepts something along the lines of (E3). And if, as seems plausible, S's having reasons for her belief requires that S be capable of giving such reasons (when appropriate), and so capable of showing her belief to be reasonable or credible, then Alston's explicit rejection of the thesis that such a capability is required for being justified arguably carries with it a rejection of (E2). In fact, however, Alston is even less sympathetic to proceduralism than this readil1g makes him out to be. For, he is explicitly sceptical about what he calls (e.g. at EJ 84 ff.) the" deontological" conception of justification, according to which being justified is a matter of fulfilment of epistemic responsibilities: To think of epistemic justification as amounting to episten1ic responsibility is to treat the former as a normative concept, one that belongs to a circle of concepts that includes duty, obligation, blame, reproach, right, and wrong. [One is then] thinking of being justified in believing that p as either having done one's episten1ic duty in so believing, or as not having violated any epistemic duty in so believing. If we want to keep epistemic justification in line with other species of the genus, we will have to opt for the latter. What I am justified in doing is not always something I have an obligation to do . . . So ... on a normative construal, S's being justified in believing that p amounts to S's not violating any epistemic obligation in believingthatp. (EJ74-5)
What is problematic about this conception of justification, Alston argues,6is that it apparently presupposes an unacceptable voluntarism with respect to beliefs. Duties and obligations pertain, at least in the first instance, to actions which are within one's voluntary control, and believing, although broadly speaking something a person does, is not such an action. Confronted with argument or evidence, one cannot then choose what, if anything, to believe.
6 In his discussion (El 72 ff.) of Laurence BonJour's critique of immediate knowledge, but mostly in "Concepts of Epistemic Justification" and "The Deontological Conception of Epistemic Justification" , essays 4 and 5 of EJ. The discussion that follows here offers only a brief precis of his principal considerations and alternatives.
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One is simply either convinced or unconvinced; that is, one finds oneself believing or disbelieving this or that. Alston himself consequently favours what he calls (EJ96 ff.) an "evaluative" conception of justification, according to which S is prima facie justified in believing that-p just in case S has "adequate grounds for believing that p, where adequate grounds are those sufficiently indicative of the truth of p" (98-9). Now, this may sound rather like the conception of justification as reasoning that he has been criticizing, but it is not. Alston concedes that the notion of "adequate grounds" is a problematic one, but he suggests that given its connection to the notion of truth, from one natural perspective it is "just reliability of belief formation with an evaluative frosting" (EJ 108): [Where] a belief is based on adequate grounds, that belief has been formed in a reliable fashion. In fact, it is plausible to take reliability as a criterion for adequacy of grounds. If my grounds for believing that p are not such that it is generally true that beliefs like that formed on grounds like that are true, they cannot be termed 'adequate'. (Ell 08-9)
What stands in the way of simply identifying evaluative justification with reliability is Alston's moderate internalism, according to which, in order to be justified, a belief must be based on adequate grounds that fall "within the subject's psychological states" (EJ 109): When we ask whether S is justified in believing that p, we are . . . asking a question from the standpoint of an aim at truth; but we are not asking whether things are in fact as S believes. We are getting at something more "internal" to S's "perspective on the world". (El98)
That is why, Alston adds, "the logical independence of truth and justification" is properly "a staple of the epistemological literature" (ibid.). It is not, I think, an accident that, when discussing the "deontological" conception of justification, Alston promptly shifts from talking about epistemic responsibilities to talking about epistemic or intellectual obligations or duties. The latter idioms are not merely normative but also implausibly formal and legalistic. They suggest a (codified or potentially codifiable) body of explicit rules of intellectual or epistemic conduct-what Sellars calls rules of action or "ought-to-do rules"-against which one can, so to speak, sin by omission. But, as Alston himself points out, t?ere are natural ways to extend normative talk to states of affairs which are not per se within the scope of one's voluntary control: 115
Immediate Knowledge If we are to continue to think of intellectual obligations as having to do with believing, it will hav:e to be more on the model of the way in which obligations bear on various other conditions over which one lacks direct voluntary control but which one can influence by voluntary actions, such conditions as being overweight, being irritable, being in poor health, or having friends. . . [In such cases, we can] speak of our having obligations to do what we can, or as much as can reasonably be expected of us, to influence those conditions . . . [This] suggests that we might frame a deontological conception of justification according to ¥lhich one is epistemically justified in believing that p ifjone's believing that p is not the result of one's failure to fulfill one's intellectual obligations vis-a.-vis one's belief-forming and maintaining activities. (EJ92-3)
As we have seen, Sellars thinks of the epistemic authority of "trans-level credibility" arguments as ultimately deriving from norms governing language acquisition and use, and he argues himself7 that the latter are not "ought-todo" rules of action but fundamentally "rules of criticism"; that is, "ought-tobe" rules having the form X's ought to be in state
What is significant about such ru.1es is that the "subject-matter subjects" to which the rule applies, the Xs, need not themselves be agents, capable of obeying ought-to-do rules, and hence they need not themselves be capable of having the concept of being in state
7
e.g. in "LTC" 93-117.
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This charge, he replies, rests on a too simple conception of knowledge ascriptions. For, while, as we have seen, on Sellars' view, in order for his current tokening of 'This is green' to count as expressing observational knowledge, Jones must now know an appropriate fact of the form X is a reliable symptom of Y, and so, specifically, must now be able to cite prior observations which evidentially support the reliability of perceptual utterances as indicators of particular states of affairs, this, in turn requires only that it is correct to say that Jones now knows, thus remembers, that these particular facts did obtain. It does not require that it be correct to say that at the time these facts did obtain he then knew them to obtain. And the regress disappears. Thus, while Jones's ability to give inductive reasons today is built on a long history of acquiring and manifesting verbal habits in perceptual situations ... it does not require that any episode in this prior time be characterizeable as expressing knowledge. ("EPM" #37, 169)
The key point, as Sellars later put it, is that members of a linguistic community "start out by being the subject-matter subjects of the ought-to-be's and graduate to the status of agent subjects of the ought-to-do's" ("LTC" 100). It is clear, then, that Sellars would have no difficulty in accepting the "involuntarist" amendment that Alston offers for his original "deontological" conception of justification. But Sellars' conception of justification, although also arguably" deontological", nevertheless differs fundamentally from Alston's modified "involuntarist" version precisely by virtue of its proceduralist commitments. Alston's conception is state-centred and backwardlooking. Like pure reliabilism, it is basically concerned with the genesis of beliefs. The normative question it poses is whether a believer has done everything that she was intellectually obligated to do vis-it-vis the (voluntary) shaping of her (involuntary) belief-forming and -sustaining propensities. 8 Sellars' conception, in contrast, is forward-looking and activity-centred. He is fundamentally concerned with what a believer can do to justify her beliefs, however formed, if and when they are appropriately challenged. S is justified in believing that-p, that is, only if she is in a position to justify the belief that-p, where the relevant justificatory reasoning of course may, but needn't, mention the processes by which she came to believe what she does. Here it is perhaps worth remarking that the justificatory responses actually produced when an unqualified perceptual judgement is confronted by a 8 Cf. Alston's original characterization of deontological accounts as "thinking of being justified in believing that p as either having done one's epistemic duty in so believing, or as not having violated any epistemic duty in so believing" (EJ74; my italics).
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determinate sceptical challenge need not, and characteristically will not, have the stylized form of explicit premises-and-conclusion "level-ascent" deductive arguments made perspicuous in reflective epistemological theorizing. Depending upon the specific nature of the challenge, the defacto response will more likely be something along the lines of "There's nothing wrong with my eyes"; "I'm not (colour)blind, you know"; "It's broad daylight"; or "I know a red apple when I see one". Such responses can be fleshed out into explicit "trans-level" reasonings of the sort we have been discussing, but in everyday non-didactic and non-pedantic conversational contexts there is typically no reason to go to the trouble of doing so. Curiously enough, Alston himself cites something like Sellars' forwardlooking proceduralist conception of justification in support of his own moderate internalism. There is, he proposes, a "basic, irreducible, requirement of epistemic accessibility ofgroundfor the belief that attaches to our concept of epistemic justification" (EJ225): My suggestion is that the background against which the concept of epistemic justification has developed is the practice of critical reflection on our beliefs, the practice of the epistemic assessment of beliefs (with respect to the likelihood of their being true), the challenging of beliefs and responses to such challenges. To respond successfully to such a challenge one must specify an adequate ground of the belief, a ground that provides a sufficient indication of the truth of the belief. . . [The idea is] that what it is for a belief to be justified is that the belief and its ground be such that it is in a position to pass such a test; that the subject has what it takes to respond successfully to such a challenge. A justified belief is one that could survive a critical reflection. But then the justifier must be accessible to the subject. (EJ225-6)
At this point, the difference between Alston's n10derate internalism and Sellars' strong internalism threatens to disappear. But that is an illusion. For one thing, although Alston is prepared to acknowledge that the concept of epistemic justification developed against the backgroundof our critical reflective practices, he is unwilling to concede that only beings capable of such critical reflection can properly be said to entertain justified or unjustified beliefs. Indeed, his second diagnostic explanation of Sellars' strong internalist convictions sees them precisely as a consequence of Sellars' sharing "the widespread tendency of epistemologists to think of knowledge as the exclusive possession of critically reflective subjects, where being'critically reflective' essentially involves the tendency to ask, and the capacity to answer, questions as to what justifies one's beliefs or makes them reasonable" (EJ71). N at to put too fine a point on it, Alston finds this stance unfair to inarticulate non-academics, not to mention small children and non-linguistic animals: 118
Immediate Knowledge Presunlably epistemology is not limited to understanding the condition of philosophers and other choice spirits who have achieved a considerable ability in making explicit what it takes to render one or another sort of belief rational. It is, more generally and more basically, an attempt to understand the nature and conditions of such cognitive achievements as getting accurate information about the immediate environnlent through perception, one's awareness of what one is thinking or feeling at the moment, and one's recollection of what happened to one in the past. If terms like 'knowledge' are confined to the cognitive achievements of critically reflective subjects, we shall have to find a new ternl for the territory in its full extent. (EJ71)
Now, in his own way, Sellars is prepared to concede this point: [Of course] there is a legitimate sense in which animals can be said to think and hence to be able [for instance] ... to see a pink ice cube and to see that it is pink. Furthermore, the point is inlportant in its own right and not simply a rhetorical maneuver. For if one ties thinking too closely to language, the acquisition of linguistic skills by children becomes puzzling in ways which generate talk about 'innate grammatical theories'. ("SK" i. 32, 303)
But while Sellars thus has considerable sympathy with the spirit of Alston's remarks, he is plainly unwilling to swallow them whole; for, when the chips are down, if epistemology is literally concerned with cognitive achievements, then there is no separating it from linguistic competence, and so, ultimately, no separating it from an adequate command of justificatory practices: Not all 'organized behavior' is built on linguistic structures. The most that can be claimed is that what might be called 'conceptual thinking' is essentially tied to language, and that, for obvious reasons, the central or core concept of what thinking is pertains to conceptual thinking. Thus, our common-sense understanding of what sub-conceptual thinking-e.g., that of babies and animals-consists in, involves viewing them as engaged in 'rudimentary' forms of conceptual thinking. We interpret their behavior using conceptual thinking as a model but qualify this model in ad hoc and unsystematic ways which really amount to the introduction of a new notion which is nevertheless labeled 'thinking'. Such analogical extensions of conceptions, when supported by experience, are by no means illegitimate. Indeed, it is essential to science. It is only when the negative analogies are overlooked that the danger of serious confusion and misunderstanding arises. ("SK" i. 32-3, 303-4)
In short, Sellars explicitly denies that, in the primary, i.e. non-analogical, sense, "there is any awareness of logical space prior to, or independent of, the acquisition of a language" ("EPM" #31, 162). In particular, he explicitly rejects a familiar semantic story according to which, for instance, 119
Immediate Knowledge the word 'red' means the quality red by virtue of ... two facts: briefly, the fact that it has the syntax of a predicate, and the fact that it is a response (in certain circumstances) to red objects ("EPM" #31, 162)
On Sellars' view, something more is required for the exercise of a genuinely cognitive capacity than a propensity to exhibit such a regular pattern of differential responses, a propensity potentially shared by simple electronic devices and suitably trained parrots. 9 Just what more is required, we have already seen, is that the manifestation of such a propensity be, at the same time, a step into the normative; that is, taking up a position in "the logical space of reasons". To put the point compactly, one does not know what the word 'red' means-alternatively (and equivalently), one does not have the concept redunless one knows what it is for something to be red, and that requires that one know what sorts of considerations count for and against the claim that something is red. As Brandom explains it: The genuine noninferential reporter of red things has, and the parrot has not, mastered the inferential role played by reports of that type-where inferential role is a matter of what conclusions one is entitled to draw from such a statement when it is overheard, what would count as areason for it, and what is incompatible with it and so a reason against it. This is a matter of the inferentially articulated content of the assertional commitment undertaken by the reporter in virtue of the performance that is the reporting; what the reporter is responsible for ... This notion of responsibility, or of what conclusions one has given others the right to draw, or has obliged oneself to draw, and what other commitments would count as entitling one to the commitment one has undertaken is the normative element in linguistic conductIO
"[The1idea that epistemic facts can be analysed without ren1ainder-even 'in principle'-into non-epistemic facts", Sellars argues, is "a radical mistake ... of a piece with the so-called 'naturalistic fallacy' in ethics" ("EPM" #5, 131); the mistake, that is, of supposing that normative 'ought's can be analysed without remainder in terms of descriptive 'is's. But even if some rapprochement might be reached along these lines regarding epistemic characterizations of brutes, infants, and the linguistically infirm, what more fundamentally separates Alston's moderate internalist understanding of justification from Sellars' strong proceduralist version is Alston's desire to make room for a model of "immediate epistemization" that he calls 'justification by experience' : 9 And, as Robert Brandom is fond of observing, by chunks of iron, which, by rusting or not rusting, respond differentially to oxygen-rich and oxygen-poor environments. 10 From his "Study Guide", pp. 140-1.
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We want to leave open at least the conceptual possibility of direct or immediate justification by experience . . . as well as indirect or mediate justification by relation to other beliefs (inferentially in the most explicit cases). (EJ 101)
On this model, when I come to believe that this is a tree because this visually appears to me to be the case. . . my belief that that is a tree is based on my visual experience, or, if you prefer, on certain aspects of that experience (EJ 99)
Alston concedes that some epistemologists would find the experiential paradigm unacceptable, nlaintaining that beliefs can be based only on other beliefs: They would treat perceptual cases by holding that the belief that a tree is over there is based on the beliefthat there visually appears to me to be a tree over there, rather than, as we are suggesting, on the visual appearance itself. I can't accept that, largely because I doubt that all perceptual believers have such beliefs about their visual experience (EJ 101)
But, ostensibly just because the question is controversial, Alston doesn't want to incorporate either answer to it into an accoul1t of the concept of justification per se. On Sellars' view, in contrast, Alston's talk of "basing" beliefs on "visual experiences" precisely blurs the distinction between non-propositional causes and propositional contents, or, equivalently, between non-conceptual sensations and conceptual perceptual takings. The only normative paradigm of a belief, B, being "based on" particular "grounds", G, is the paradigm of illferential support, where G, like B, has the logical shape of a proposition, one whose truth implies or confirms the truth of B. Where the "grounds", G, do not have the logical shape of a proposition, the belief B can be "based on" them only in the sense of being a response to them; that is, being (proximately) causally evoked by intermediate sensory states, themselves (reliably) caus" ally evoked by appropriate objective states of affairs. As we have seen, Sellars agrees that if there is inferential knowledge it is plausible to conclude that there must be non-inferential knowledge, and so a stratum of "non-inferentially reasonable beliefs". But he insists that it does not follow from the fact that there is inferential justification that there must also be non-inferential justification. That is, beliefs can be non-inferentially reasonable without being non-inferentially justified. Indeed, Sellars argues, the concept of a reason seems so clearly tied to that of an inference or argument [and, we might add, to the idea of a practice of reasoning] that the concept of non-inferential 121
Immediate Knowledge reasonableness seems to be a contradictio in adjecto. Surely, we are inclined to say, for a belief (or believing) to be reasonable, there must be a reason for the belief (or believing). And must not this reason be something other than the belief or believing for which it is the reason? And surely, we are inclined to say, to believe something because it is reasonable (to believe it) involves not only that there be a reason but that, in a relevant sense, one has or is in possession of the reason. ("SI(" iii. 16,337)
The argument, in short, runs thus: Justifiers render beliefs reasonable; that is, justifiers function as reasons for believing son1ething; that is, as reasons for someone to believe something. Nothing can function as such a reason unless it can play an appropriate role in a person's reasoning; that is, has a logical shape which n1akes it available to serve as a premise or (mediate or ultimate) conclusion. Consequently, all justification is inferential. The whole point of Sellars' account of "trans-level credibility" is to show how non-inferentially reasonable beliefs can nevertheless be inferentially justified. Alston represents an advocate of the "level-ascent" argument as holding that "when we consider any putative bit of immediate knowledge, we find that the belief involved really depends for its epistemization on some higher level reasons that have to do with its epistemic status" (El64), but it is now clear that this does not accurately represent Sellars' view. He does not propose that we (simply) "find" that the "epistemization" of a belief which counts as in1mediate knowledge "really depends" on its relation to other, higher-level beliefs. Rather Sellars' internalism is rooted in an integrated normative theory of epistemic justification, language-mastery, concept-possession, and perceptual experience, a theory that both facilitates positive accounts of, as Brandom puts it, the difference between (mere) sentience and (genuine) sapience and of the inferential justification of non-inferential (i.e. underived) knowledge, and also explains the appearance of "self-authenticating" epistemically independent knowledge. For, although the ["level-ascent" or "trans-level credibility"] justification of the belief that there is a red apple in front of (Jones) is an inferential justification, it has the peculiar character that its essential premise asserts the occurrence of the very same belief in a specific context. It is this factwhich gives the appearance that such beliefs are self-justifying and hence gives the justification the appearance of being non-inferential. ("SK" iii. 35, 342)
I shall close this chapter by exploring a further, fairly subtle, line of argument which supports not just epistemic internalism but explicitly Sellars' strong "first-person" interl1alisn1, in contrast to Brandom's weaker "third-person" version. To focus the discussion, let us consider a radically externalist 122
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view according to which the notion of justification (i.e. justificatory reasoning) has no essential role to play in an account of the concept of knowledge. On this view, call it "concept externalism", what is essential to knowledge is only true belief. Concept externalism in fact actually has its philosophical adherents. Crispin Sartwell is probably the best known defender of this view on the contemporary scene,11 but the view is already adumbrated in Franz von Kutschera's Grundfragen der Erkenntnistheorie, 12 and the arguments I am about to canvass are derived from that source. The reasoning in support of concept externalisn1 is deceptively simple: Knowledge has both objective and subjective aspects. In particular, a person possesses knowledge of some matter of fact whenever he is both objectively and subjectively in the bestpossible epistemicposition with regard to that matter of fact. 13 Now, there is no objective epistemic property a belief can have that is stronger than truth. The objective episten1ic position of someone whose (relevant) matter-of-factual belief is true, that is, cannot be enhanced. Afortiori, it is not enhanced by his rehearsing or having available any sort of justificatory reasoning. If such reasoning has a role to play with regard to knowledge, then, it will be in connection with its subjective aspects. On the face of it, however, there is no stronger subjective epistemic relationship that a person can have to a matter-of-factual truth than wholeheartedly to believe it. The subjective epistemic position of someone who unqualifiedly believes a (particular) matter-of-factual truth cannot be augn1ented. Such belief may result from justificatory reasoning, but it presumably might also be produced by any of a variety of purely causal mechanisms. The subjective epistemic position of the believer will be the same. So, justificatory reasoning has no essential role to play with regard to knowledge; what is essential is only true belief. Here's how von Kutschera put it: Conviction is ... a sufficient subjective criterion for knowledge. A search for stronger subjective criteria for knowledge is consequently illusory: One cannot be more confident than fully confident. But objective criteria for knowledge stronger than truth are likewise not conceivable: A sentence can also not be more correct than true. Thus
11 See e.g. his HI(nowledge is Merely True Belief" ("KMTB"), American Philosophical Quarterly, 28 (1992), pp. 157-65, and "Why Knowledge is Merely True Belief" ("WKM"), The Journal of Philosophy, 89 (1992), pp. 167-80. 12 Franz von Kutschera, Grundfragen der Erkenntnistheorie (GE) (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1982). 13 Alston sometimes formulates his preferred concept of justification in terms of a believer's being in a "strong" or "favorable" epistemic position, a notion that he in turn typically elucidates in terms of reliabilist "truth-conduciveness" (cf. e.g. EJ 176,200 ff.).
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On this view, the connection between reliable belief-forming processes and knowledge is especially straightforward: Reliable epistemic processes just are those that regularly or preponderantly give rise to true beliefs, and true matterof-factual beliefs are knowledge. At this point, a more traditional externalist is likely to protest that there is, indeed, an objective epistemic property of beliefs that is stronger than truth. A person whose belief is not only true but also a product of a reliable beliefforming process is in a better objective epistemic position than one whose belief is merely true. IS Indeed, as we have noted, some externalists interpret the notion of justification in such a way that a belief's being justified just is its being the product of reliable belief-forming mechanisms. I have already argued that the notion of justification is conceptually bound up, via the notion of reasonableness of belief, with the activity of justificatory reasoning, and I shall continue to use the term in that way, but nothing essential turns on such mere terminological differences. What is at issue at the moment is whether, independently of any considerations regarding the availability of justificatory reasoning, the objective epistemic status of a belief is enhanced by its being the product of a reliable belief-forming process. I cannot see that it is. To begin with, reliable processes issuing in matter-offactual beliefs are characteristically not infallible, and it seen1S plausible enough that the objective epistemic position of someone who, as a result of the operation of such processes, has come to hold a false matter-of-factual belief is no better than that of someone who holds the same false belief so to speak per accidens; that is, as the result of a hunch or guess. But if the relevant etiology of a false belief does not improve its believer's objective epistemic 14 "Uberzeugung ist ... ein hinreichendes subjektives Kriterium fur Wissen. Eine Suche nach starkeren subjektiven Kriterien fur Wissen ist also i1lusorisch: Sicherer als ganz sicher kann man nicht sein. Starkere objektive Kriterien fur Wissen als die Wahrheit des Sachverhalts sind aber ebenfalls nicht denkbar: Richtiger als wahr kann ein Satz ebenfalls nicht sein. Wissen wird hier also in zwei Komponenten aufgespalten: in die subjektive Komponente der Uberzeugung und in die objektive Komponente der Wahrheit, und beide sind einer Steigerung nicht fahig." 15 This objection has been variously urged on me by Bill Lycan, Dmit Yal9in, and Richard Miller. For a time I found it persuasive and was consequently prepared to characterize "concept externalism" as the thesis that knowledge consisted in reliably formed true belief. I think that my argument for the dialectical instability of concept externalism goes through equally well on this parsing of the view, but I have also become convinced that, because that reasoning goes through equally well, the idea that a reliably formed true belief is objectively epistemically better off than one which is merely true is a mistaken one.
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position, it is hard to see why that same etiology should positively enhance his objective epistemic position when the resultant belief happens to be true. After all, by any externalist's own lights, truth is the fundamental positive objective epistemic property. The reliability of a belief-formingprocess, that is, is defined in terms of its issuing in predominantly true products. If any positive objective epistelnic status accrues to a belief by virtue of its resulting from a reliable process, then, that status itself will presuppose and derive from the positive objective epistemic status of true beliefs as such, and so cannot improve upon it. Von Kutschera concurs: One can indeed restrict the concept of knowledge . . . to true beliefs that have been arrived at in certain ways - and that corresponds better to some uses of the word 'knowledge' in colloquial language [...]-but one does not thereby reach a qualitatively higher sort of knowledge. (GE 24)16
I conclude, then, that a principled and consistent externalist is in fact con1mitted to the view that no objective epistemic property of a belief can be stronger than truth. Concept externalism, as I have characterized it, simply reflects this commitmel1t. If, as concept externalism has it, lmowledge is just true belief, however, what becomes of the traditional, and surely correct, observation that a lucky guess or a correct hunch does not constitute knowledge? Well, such a lucky guess or correct hunch is (by stipulation) true. Truth is what makes a guess lucky or a hunch correct. If such a guess or hunch does not constitute knowledge, then that must be because it is not in the relevant sense a belief. Sartwell, for instance, suggests that arguments to..the effect that some third condition is required for knowledge often play on an insufficiently rich notion of belief. Such arguments. . . often take the form simply of pointing out that a lucky guess does not count as knowledge. But of course, in the usual case, a lucky guess is not even a belief. ("KMTB" 159)
What is needed for a concept-externalist account of knowledge, in other words, is evidently a rather restrictive notion of belief, one incorporating an epistemic attitude of certitude or unqualified subjective confidence. Von Kutschera, for example, specifies (GE 2) that someone, S, believes (in the relevant sense) that-p whenever p l1as for S a (subjective) probability of 1. It is 16 "Man kann daher zwar den Begriff des Wissens ... einschranken auf wahre Dberzeugungen, die auf gewisse Weise gewonnen sind-und das entspricht manchen umgangssprachlichen Verwendungen des Wortes 'Wissen' besser ...-aber man gelangt dadurch nicht zu einer qualitativ hoheren Art des Wissens."
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appropriate to ask, then, under what conditions a person can properly be said to believe some true proposition in the restrictive sense that, according to this picture, is determinative for knowledge. Keith Lehrer, for example, gives us 17 the case of Mr Truetemp, who, without his knowledge or consent, has had implanted in hin1 a reliable temperature-measuring device-a "ten1pucomp"-whose outputs are fed into his central nervous system in such a way that he periodically finds himself with spontaneous thougl1ts regarding the precise temperature in his immediate vicinity, thoughts which are in fact overwhelmingly true. Mr Truetemp is consequently equipped to be a highly reliable and accurate reporter of ambient temperatures. But what form can we reasonably expect his reports of ambient temperature to take? As Lehrer originally describes the case, Truetemp does not know that he is reliable. He finds himself with spontaneous convictions regarding the ambient temperature, but he has no reason whatsoever for supposing those convictions to be correct. Considered from the epistemic point of view, Lehrer argues, Trueten1p is in the same position as Trusting Sue (as I shall call her), who bases her judgements regarding temperature on the readings of an old thermometer hanging on the wall of a local service station. Even if the thermometer happens to be accurate and its readings consequently trustworthy, since such thermometers found in such locations are often inaccurate, as long as she lacks specific positive evidence of the reliability of her thermometer Sue is not entitled to treat its readings as trustworthy. Mr Truetemp stands to his spontaneous thoughts regarding ambient temperature in the same epistemic relationship that Trusting Sue stands to the readings of her old service-station thermometer. Even if those thoughts happen to be accurate and hence trustwortl1y-as we informed outsiders in fact know them to be-since such spontaneous convictions about precise temperatures are often (indeed, typically) inaccurate, as long as he lacks positive evidence of their reliability Truetemp is not entitled to treat his non-inferential temperature-attributions as trustworthy. The key point to make now is that if Mr Truetemp is a reflective and responsible episten1ic agent he himself should, can, and will conclude that he is not so entitled-and the strength of his subjective confidence in his spontaneous judgements of temperature will in turn be affected by that conclusion. This interplay between objective warrant and subjective confidence is a reflection of the pervasive role of reason in mature human perception. Ernest Sosa has formulated the point especially clearly: 17
In his Theory of Knowledge (Boulder, Colo. and San Francisco, Calif.: Westview Press, 1990),
pp. 163 ff.
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Immediate Knowledge [N 0] human blessed with reason has merely animal knowledge of the sort attainable by beasts. For even when perceptual belief derives as directly as it ever does from sensory stimuli, it is still relevant that one has not perceived the signs of contrary testimony. A reason-endowed being automatically monitors his background information and his sensory input for contrary evidence and automatically opts for the most coherent hypothesis even when he responds most directly to sensory stimuli. For even when response to stimuli is most direct, ifone were also to hear or see the signs of credible contrary testimony, that would change one's response. The beliefs of a rational anim~l hence would seem never to issue from unaided introspection, memory, or perception. For reason is always at least a silent partner on the watch for other relevant data, a silent partner whose very silence is a contributing cause of the belief outcome. (KP240)
The background information available to Mr Truetemp and Trusting Sue includes the fact that beliefs about ambient temperature that have been arrived at in the manners in question-by spontaneous unreflective judgement or by consulting an old service-station thern10meter-are generally not accurate and reliable. But that is precisely a ground for the "silent partner" reason in these instances to speak up, and, in particular, to caution both Sue and Truetemp that the sort of untempered cOl1fidence in the correctness of their convictions that would be appropriately manifested in unqualified reports of ambient temperature is here epistemologically out of place. 18 It is at this juncture that we should recall Brandom's description of Monique's relationship to her spontaneous beliefs regarding hornbeams: She may still be uncertain of her discriminatory capacity long after she has in fact become reliable. In such a situation she may have a true belief that there is a hornbeam in front of her, yet be completely unable to justify that claim ... and even deny that she is a reliable noninferential reporter of hornbeams. (MIE 219)
In the light of what we have just noted in the case of Mr Truetemp, there is surely a tension in the complex of epistemic attitudes and C011ducts that Brandom attributes to Monique. On the one hand, he posits that she is "often disposed to respond to the visibility of leaves of the right sort by
18 Early in this chapter we cited Alston's decision to forego considering"an important argument to the effect that wherever an immediate justification for a belief is defeasible we can be (sufficiently) justified in the belief only if we are justified in believing that no defeating circumstances obtain" (EJ 61), but now it may appear that we have based our case for internalism on just that argument, without giving Alston a proper opportunity to reply. The charge, however, is unwarranted, for the current argument is directed not against externalism or the possibility of "immediate epistemization" in general, but specifically against the radical "concept-externalist" claim that the notion of justificatory reasoning is entirely irrelevant to knowledge-ascriptions per se.
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noninferentially reporting the presence of a hornbeam" . But, as we observed in Chapter 2, the bald unqualified assertion "That's a hornbeam" implies a degree of certitude or epistemic confidence to which someone who, like Monique, is uncertain about her discriminatory powers in respect of hornbeams-indeed, who will even deny that she is a reliable non-inferential reporter of hornbeams-should, can, and will realize that she is not entitled. To the extent that Monique is a responsible and reflective epistemic agent, then, we should expect her to offer, at best, only guarded assertions regarding which trees are hornbeams-"That looks like a hornbeam"; "I think it's a hornbeam"; "It's probably a hornbeam"; "I'm inclined to call it a hornbeam", etc. 19 Similarly, if Trusting Sue and Mr Truetemp proportion their epistemic confidence to what they are entitled to believe regarding the trustworthiness of their evidence, they too will be disposed to offer only guarded claims regarding the ambient temperature-"Well, this thern10meter reads 94°"; "If I must say, I'll go with 94°" . Mr Truetemp, Sue, and Monique, in other words, will all fail to manifest the unqualified sort of belief required for their true beliefs to count as knowledge from the perspective of concept externalism. Ex hypothesi, of course, we knowledgeable outsiders are entitled to treat Monique's identifications of hornbeams, however tentatively and guardedly expressed, as trustworthy, and, similarly, given what we stipulatively know about Mr Truetemp's implants, we will properly regard his reports of temperature, however hedged and hesitant they may be, as thoroughly reliable. Brandom is right, that is, to suppose that we will be inclined to treat such claims as "authoritative injust the way that is required for knowledge" . If we base our beliefs on Monique's or Truetemp's reports, in other words, our judgements regarding which trees are hornbeams or the ambient temperature in Truetemp's vicinity need not be guarded. We are in an epistemic position to treat Monique and Truetemp as, so to speak, reliable intentional indicatqrs. But that is surely precisely because we are in an epistemic position to support the judgements we base on Monique's or Truetemp's testimony by citing their reliability. We have available, that is, suitable pieces of justificatory reasoning:
19 As various philosophers have observed, in asserting that p one represents oneself as knowing that p. The locus classicus is probably the work of G. E. Moore (e.g. "[By] assertingp positively, you imply, though you don't assert, that you know that p."), Commonplace Book (London: Routledge, 1962), p. 277, although the thesis is also explicitly endorsed by Peter K. Unger, in Ignorance: A Case for Scepticism (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1975). A useful discussion can be found in Timothy Williamson, "Knowing and Asserting", Philosophical Review, 105 (1996), pp. 489-523. The present point rests on the corollary that one will normally refrain from positively asserting that p unless one is confident that one in fact does know that p.
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(jm)
(When queried) Monique reports (guardedly) that this tree is a hornbeam. Monique's tentative identifications of hornbeams are in fact highly reliable. So, it is reasonable to conclude that this tree is indeed a hornbeam.
(jt)
Mr Truetemp candidly reports (guardedly) that the local temperature is 94°. Truetemp's spontaneous convictions regarding temperature are highly reliable. So, it is reasonable to conclude that the local temperature is indeed 94°.
Such justificatory reasoning derives the likelihood of a particular judgement's correctness from a general premise, available to the knower (i.e. to us), regarding the reliability of, in the one instance, Monique's (guarded) identifications of hornbeams, in the other, Truetemp's (qualified) spontaneous temperature-attributions. And that, we recall, is precisely what Sellars proposes as a condition for its being the case that Jones's spontaneous judgements regarding, for example, the colours of objects in his vicinity are expressions of (his) observational knowledge. Of course, nothing in principle prevents Monique and Truetemp themselves from investigating the correctness of their own spontaneous judgen1ents, and thereby coming warrantedly to accept the sort of general reliability premise stipulatively available to us knowledgeable outsiders. They could, that is, come to be in a position to apply to their spontaneous judgements and convictions, in the first-person, "trans-level" justificatory reasoning regarding those judgements and convictions of just the sort that we illustrated in the third-person; that is: (jm*)
I (Monique) am inclined to identify this tree as a hornbeam. My past identifications of hornbeams haveproved to be highly reliable. So, it is reasonable (for me) to conclude that this tree is indeed a hornbeam.
(jt*)
The thought that the temperature is 94° has just spontaneously occurred to me (Mr Truetemp). My previous spontaneous convictions regarding temperature have proved to be highly reliable. So, it is reasonable (for me) to conclude that the local temperature is indeed 94°.
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Only then would Monique and Truetemp themselves be entitled to, and inclined to make, the sort of unguarded assertions which manifest the epistemic confidence requisite for the form of unqualified belief whose truth suffices for it to count as knowledge from the perspective of concept externalism. The view I have called 'concept externalism' consequently proves to be dialectically unstable. Concept externalism proposes, in essence, to eliminate the traditional role assigned to justificatory reasonings by characterizing (matter-of-factual) knowledge as objective and subjective epistemic optimality: one's being in the best possible objective and subjective epistemic position vis-a.-vis particular (empirical) claims. What we have discovered is a further ground for internalism: Even if we grant that the justificatory reasonings available to a prospective knower cannot improve upon the objective epistemic status of a true belief, they will still playa crucial role with regard to the subjective dimension of knowledge. Plato was probably the first explicitly to recognize this: [True opinions], as long as they remain, are a fine thing and all they do is good, but they are not willing to remain long, and they escape from a man's mind, so that they are not worth much until one ties them down by an account of the reason why [of the logos] ... After they are tied down, in the first place they become knowledge, and then they remain in place. That is why knowledge is prized higher than correct opinion, and knowledge differs from correct opinion in being tied down. (Meno, 98a)
Less metaphorically, what we have again encountered is the gradated spectrum of epistemic attitudes toward a given claim bounded by the two distinct extremes of certitude: complete confidence that the claim is true and complete confidence that it is false. To be in the best possible subjective epistemic position regarding a given claim is just to be subjectively located at one of those extremes. In more traditional terms, it is to be entirely free of doubt; for, to be in doubt is characteristically to be more or less epistemically irr~s olute, to be to some extent unsettled in one's convictions. This, again to anticipate, is just the notion that C. S. Peirce had in mind when he thematized the removal of doubt as the fixation of belief. In short, even when construed as epistemic optimality in the style of concept externalism, knowledge is and remains a normative matter. That, as we have seen, is the deepest root of Sellars' internalism: The essential point is that in characterizing an episode or a state as that of knowing, we are not giving an empirical description of that episode or state; we are placing it in the logical space of reasons, of justifying and being able to justify what one says. ("EPM" #37,169)
A responsible and reflective epistemic agent will c
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subjective convictions to his objective epistemic entitlements. The justificatory arguments available to him are what secure those entitlements. 2o That is the point. And this point has ramifications for traditional epistemological disputes between "foundationalists" and "coherentists" as well. For, it implies that particular spontaneous thoughts and judgements that are "immediate" or "foundational" in the sense of being underived or non-inferential, nevertheless owe their character as expressions of (observational) knowledge to their potential embedding in justificatory reasoning practices, not only as data for further enquiry, e.g. as premises from which empirical generalizations can then be "inductively" inferred, but also as conclusions of "trans-level" reasonableness arguments of the sort to which Sellars has drawn our attention; that is, arguments which depart from general premises regarding the evidential value of just such episodes. It is for this reason that Sellars concludes that the metaphor of 'foundation' is misleading in that it keeps us from seeing that if there is a logical dimension in which other empirical propositions rest on observation reports, there is another logical dimension in which the latter rest on the former. ("EPM" #38, 170)
And I would suggest, finally, that it is an implicit recognition of the role of appeals to the reliability of belief-forming processes in such justificatory reasonings that externalists systematically mistake for a justification-independent enhancement of a believer's objective epistemic position. 20 Exactly what it means for a justificatory argument to be available to an individual is, of course, a good question. While such availability does not require that a knower actuallyformulate the particular justificatory reasonings at issue, it does presumably imply at least that she commands suitable cognitive and epistemic resources for doing so, thereby excluding, for example, non-linguistic animals and even beginning human cognizers (infants and relatively young children) from the ranks of fully fledged knowers. Since, as we have already remarked, the full-blooded cognitive and epistemic vocabulary systematically admits of diverse analogical applications, however, the issues here are both delicate and complex; too complex to be usefully treated here in extensive detail. For the present, then, I shall simply note their existence and pass on.
131
Everyday Knowledge: When does 5 know that p?
4
Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it. Samuel Johnson
Despite its many vicissitudes since its first articulations in the work of Plato, the traditional account of knowledge as justified true belief (briefly, the JTB account) remains the point of departure for most contemporary epistemological reflection. Ernest Sosa, for exan1ple, begins his well-known essay "The Raft and the Pyramid: Coherence versus Foundations in the Theory of Knowledge"l with the assumption: (AI)
Not everything believed is known, but nothing can be known without being at least believed (or accepted, presumed, taken for granted, or the like) in some broad sense. What additional requirements must a belief fulfill in order to be knowledge? There are surely at least the following two: (a) it must be true, and (b) it must be justified (or warranted, reasonable, correct, or the like). (KP 165)
The balance of Sosa's essay is largely concerned with the proper way to understand (b), the notion of justification, and the relationships between (b) and (a), between justification and truth. So, for instance, he immediately appends a second assumption, (A2), to the effect that the relevant notion ofjustification is both "normative" or "evaluative" and "epistemic" or "theoretical" 1 Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 5 (1980) (Studies in Epistemology), 3-25, repro as ch. 10, pp. 165-91, of Ernest Sosa, Knowledge in Perspective: Selected Essays in Epistemology (KP) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 1991).
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(in contrast to "practical"). Characteristically, however, Sosa never revisits the first moment of (AI). He evidently believes (or accepts or assumes or takes for granted) that differences among believing, accepting, assuming, taking for granted, and the like-in short, differences among various epistemic attitudes-will have no substantive bearing on the account of (matter-of-factual) knowledge. All that such knowledge requires is belief "in some broad sense", and that evidently encompasses any "pro-attitude" (as some philosophers are wont to call them) toward the claims or propositions thereby (broadly) believed. Any further differences among such attitudes will be, as it is often put, "merely psychological" . This assumption, I have argued, is nlistaken. Both our discussions of epoche and inner sense in Chapter 2 and our investigations of the epistemological internalism-externalism dispute in the preceding chapter have led us to the conclusion that there is substantial and significant interplay between such "merely psychological" matters of epistemic attitude as the strength of a believer's conviction or epistemic confidence and normative issues regarding the expressive content and epistemic status of the propositions believed. I argued that a responsible and reflective epistemic agent proportions his subjective convictions to the objective epistemic entitlements conferred by the justificatory arguments in fact available to him, and that, in the absence of such adequate warrant, straightforward claims about the world consequently properly give way to various fornls of guarded or qualified assertion. The 'seems'-operator of a hypothetical pure epoche was correlatively interpreted as an explicit tool for completely suspending objective judgenlent and retreating from any justificatory commitment to the matter-of-factual claim thus "bracketed"; but withholding endorsement from objective explanatory hypotheses also proved to be an esselltial implicit moment of reports of perceptual experiences; that is, claims delineating how something looks, sounds, tastes, smells, or feels, and the everyday 'seenls' claims that generalize them. Indeed, I have suggested that the basic role of talk about beliefs and believingper se is to register and monitor degrees of conviction and epistemic conlmitments. In the third person, "He believes that p" ful1damentally attributes a commitment to the proposition that p, paradigmatically manifested in a readiness to assert that p and, correlatively, to defend that proposition by suitable justificatory reasoning if and when confronted by a determinately grounded (i.e. not purely speculative and hypothetical) sceptical challenge. In the first person, "I believe that p", often accompanied by explicit modifiers, is characteristically used to report a degree of conviction or epistemic confidence that p falling short of complete certitude and, correlatively, to express 133
Everyday Knowledge
a corresponding normative assessment of the justificatory strength of the reasons and reasonings available to support that conviction. From this perspective, one central role of talk about knowledge and knowing will be to report and thereby make explicit the limiting epistemic attitude of certitude, implicitly expressed by a bare unqualified assertion. Correlatively, knowledge-ascriptions will express a corresponding normative assessment of the strength of available justificatory reasons and reasonings as adequate to support that degree of epistemic confidence. This suggests that, in the traditional JTB account, according to which S knows that p if and only if
(i) p is true, (ii) S believes thatp, and (iii) S is justified in believing that p,
(ii) should be interpreted along the lines of (ii'): S is fully confident that p, and (iii) will need to imply, at least, that S is entitled to his strong conviction. This quite naturally raises the question of whether available justificatory reasons and reasonings ever are adequate to support an epistemic attitude of certitude, and, if so, when. And the natural suggestion at this point is surely that the strength of S's entitlement will be proportional to the degree to which those reasons and reasonings are indicative of the truth of p. Our internalist reading of (iii), in other words, once again comes under externalist pressure. In Alston's terminology, the notion of justification seems to be an unstable hybrid of "deontological" and "evaluative" elements. The analysis of'S knows that p' proposed by Robert Fogelin (in PR) departs from just these considerations. Fogelin, that is, begins by elucidating two different interpretations of the justification condition, (iii). The first, "performance", interpretation treats (iii) as (iiip)
S justifiably came to believe that p.
On this reading, we are appraising S's epistemic conduct. That is, we are appealing to what Alston calls (e.g. at EJ 85) a "deontological" concept of justification. "In making such a claim," Fogelin writes, "we are indicating that S has been epistemically responsible in forming his belief ... [On] this interpretation of justified belief, it seems that S can be justified in believing something that is false" (PR 18). The second, "grounds", interpretation, in contrast, treats (iii) as (iiig)
S's grounds establish the truth of p.
On this reading, we are appealing to a particularly strong version of what Alston calls (e.g. at EJ 97) an "evaluative" concept of justification. When justification 134
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is understood in this way, Fogelin says, "we are speaking about a relationship between a proposition that S accepts and the grounds on which he accepts it. The (iiig) clause offers an assessment of S's reasons (or grounds), indicating that they are adequate to establish the truth of a certain proposition" (PR 19). Our received conception of knowledge, Fogelin proposes, requires that 8 be justified in believing what he does in both senses. Combining the "performance" and "grounds" justification-clauses, however, renders both the "belief" clause and the "truth" clause of the original JTB account redundant; the former because "S justifiably came to believe that p" implies that 8 does believe that p, and the latter because "8's grounds establish the truth of p" implies that p is true. The resulting analysis of'S knows that p' is sin1ple and elegant: (KF)
S knows that p if and only if S justifiably carne to believe that p on grounds that establish the truth ofp. (PR28)
"Knowledge," concludes Fogelin, "is not simply justified true belief, but ... justified true belief, justifiably arrived at" (PR 28). It follows, parenthetically, that both"concept-externalist" and strongly reliabilist conceptions of knowledge are arguably unacceptable. "Externalist theories that are purely externalist are refuted by counterexamples due to violations of the [performance] clause" (PR 41). It is worth noting that although Alston himself prefers to interpret the notion of justification "evaluatively" rather than "deontologically", he nevertheless suggests that there are reasons for rejecting the especially restrictive evaluative conception embodied in Fogelin's "grounds" interpretation: If goodness from the epistemic point of view is what we are interested in, why shouldn't we identify justification with truth, at least extensionally? What could be better from that point of view than truth? If the name of the game is the maximization of truth and the minimization of falsity in our beliefs, then plain unvarnished truth is hard to beat. This consideration, however, has not moved epistemologists to identify justification with truth, or even to take truth as a necessary and sufficient condition for justification. The logical independence of truth and justification is a staple of the epistemologicalliterature. But why should this be? I think that the answer ... has to be in terms of the "internalist" character of justification. When we ask whether S is justified in believing that p, we are ... asking a question from the standpoint of an aim at truth; but we are not asking whether things are in fact as S believes. We are getting at something more "internal" to S's "perspective on the world" . . . We want to know whether S had adequategrounds for believing that p, where adequate grounds are those sufficiently indicative of the truth of p. (El 98-9) 135
Everyday Knowledge
It obviously lies ready at hand for Fogelin to reply, however, that Alston is here precisely running together the "grounds" and "performance" conceptions of justification. The "performance" conception is indeed "internalist" in character. If what we are asking is whether S arrived at his beliefs in an epistemically responsible way, then what is relevant is precisely S's own "perspective on the world"; that is, whether it was reasonable for S, situated as he was, to come to have the beliefs that he did. But if what we are asking is whether S's grounds for believing that p were adequate, then we have explicit1y shifted to a "grounds" conception of justification, and there such internalist considerations are beside the point. For, what knowledge requires is (at least) true belief, and grounds or reasons for belief can consequently be (fully) adequate for knowledge only if they suffice to establish the truth of what is believed. 2 From this point of view, no grounds compatible with the falsity of a proposition can be "sufficiently indicative" of its truth. Among the virtues of Fogelin's analysis is that it enables hin1 to give a particularly straightforward account of what have come to be known as "Gettier problems". The phrase adverts to Edmund Gettier's now-classic essay, "Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?" ("IJTB ")3. Gettier's claim was the simple one that, on any fallibilistunderstanding of the notion of justification or warrant, i.e. one which allows that a person may be justified or warranted in believing a proposition which is nevertheless false, if justification is preserved over explicit deduction, it will always be possible to construct intuitive counter examples to the traditional JTB analysis. That is, it will always be possible to describe a scenario in which a person is ex hypothesi justified or warranted in holding a true belief which we are nevertheless reluctant to acknowledge as a case of knowledge. In support of this claim, Gettier offered two exemplary scenarios. In his first scenario, we are to suppose that Smith and Jones have applied for a certain job, and that Smith is appropriately justified in believing (d)
Jones is the man who will get the job, and Jones has ten coins in his pocket.
2 Robert Almeder defends an analogous conclusion in his book Blind Realism (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1992). His pragmatist-inspired reasoning begins by rejecting the classical notion of truth as a word-world correspondence relation in favour of a conception of truth as a word-world relation of semantic authorization, relativized to diachronically evolving conceptual frameworks. This yields a reconception of knowledge according to which satisfaction of the traditional justification or evidence-condition entails satisfaction of the truth-condition. If truth is not correspondence, but ratherfully warranted assertibility, argues Almeder, then one plainly cannot be completely justified in believing a false proposition. 3 In Analysis, 23 (1963),121-3, and widely reprinted.
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Everyday Knowledge
Smith proceeds to infer from (d) that (e)
The man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket.
which belief is thereby justified and also, so to speak per accidens, true, since "unknown to Smith", he himself is the nlan who will get the job and also has ten coins in his pocket. Despite this justified true belief, Gettier argues, Snlith does not know that (e) is true. In Gettier's second example, we are to suppose, first, that Smith is suitably justified in believing that, (f), Jones owns a Ford. Smith [then] selects three place-names quite at random, and constructs the following three propositions: (g)
Either Jones owns a Ford, or Brown is in Boston;
(h) Either Jones owns a Ford, or Brown is in Barcelona; (i)
Either Jones owns a Ford, or Brown is in Brest-Litovsk. ("IJTB" 122-3)
In each instance, Smith explicitly recognizes the relevant entailnlents and so comes justifiably to believe (g), (h), and (i), the second of which (alone) also happens to be true, since, although Jones in fact does not own a Ford, Brown is, "by the sheerest coincidence and entirely unknown to Snlith", actually in Barcelona. Here too, concludes Gettier, despite his justified true belief that (h), Smith does not know that (h). What Fogelin observes is that in each of these cases the "performance" and "grounds" clauses of the (KF) analysis of'S knows thatp' come apart. In each instance, Smith has arguably arrived at his belief in an epistemically responsible manner, correctly inferring it from something else which he has ex hypothesi justifiably (i.e. responsibly) come to believe. But in each instance Smith's grounds do not suffice to establish the truth of what he thus only per accidens truly believes. "This situation", writes Fogelin, "characterizes Gettier problems in all their manifestations, for they provide cases in which S has justifiably (i.e., responsibly) come to believe some truth on grounds that do not establish this truth" (PR 21).4 4 Fogelin's analysis also reveals a close affinity between Gettier problems and classical Cartesian "demonic" or "brain-in-vat" scepticism. There, too, we find a contrast of informational statesthat of the deceived subject and that of the malicious demon or mad scientist, to which we are made privy-and there, too, the defacto epistemic conduct of the hapless subject in arriving at his beliefs is entirely proper. Ex hypothesi he makes the best of the evidence available to him, although, alas, due to circumstances beyond his both ken and control, his (prima facie excellent) grounds for belief are in fact inadequate to establish the truth of what he believes.
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To formulate a Gettier problem, then, we need to be able to contrast two informational states: that of the subject, 5, and our own: Given the information available to 5, it might be completely responsible for hin1 to suppose that his grounds establish the truth of what he believes on their basis. He uses a standard procedure in a standard way, and nothing in the context suggests that he should not. Indeed, it might be irresponsible for him to show any more care than he does. There is, after all, something called being too careful. We, however, given a broader range of information, can see that his justificatory grounds are, in one way or another, undercut, though not in a way that 5 could be expected to recognize or take provision against. (PR 22)
In each of Gettier's original examples the protagonist, Smith, derives his true belief from afalse lemma-in the first instance that Jones will get the job and has ten coins in his pocket; in the second that Jones owns a Ford. This observation leads naturally to the suggestion that Gettier problems can be avoided by adding to the traditional JTB account of'S knows that p' a fourth clause requiring, in effect, that S's justification for believing that p make no essential use of any false premises. s A variety of counter examples have been taken rather straightforwardly to demonstrate the inadequacy of this suggestion. Consider, for instance, the (hypothetical) example of Everlight matches, manufactured to meet the highest industry standards and subjected to rigorous quality-control procedures, in consequence of v/hich they have proved to be extraordinarily reliable. 6 S, we shall assume, has personally used hundreds of Everlights, and every single one of them has ignited when it was struck. Indeed, we shall further assume that S knows of innumerable additional instances in which Everlights have been struck by others, and in not even one of those instances has the struck match failed to ignite. S consequently concludes-surely justifiably-that the next Everlight match that he draws from the box he is currently using will ignite when it is struck. He opens the box, selects a match, strikes it, and, as he expected, it ignites. S's belief thus turned out to be true and, since his justificatory reasoning appealed to no false premises, it should, 5 This suggestion occurs at the very beginning of the voluminous Gettier-problelTI literature, being in essence Michael Clark's proposal in "Knowledge and Grounds: A Comment on Mr Gettier's Paper", Analysis, 24/2 (1963), pp. 46-8. An elaborately evolved version of it can be found in Keith Lehrer, Knowledge (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974), and it has been defended at least as recently as 1988 (cf. Robert G. Meyers, The Likelihood of Knowledge (Dordrecht, Holland: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1988), ch. 5, "Justification and the Gettier Problem", pp. 86-105). 6 Based on an example from Brian Skyrms, "The Explication of 'X Knows that p' ", Journal of Philosophy, 64 (1967), pp. 373-89.
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according to the present proposal, be immune to Gettier problenls. That is, it ought to be true that S knew that the match would ignite when it was struck. But we can consistently suppose that the match selected by S happened to be one of the tiny handful of defective matches ever to slip past the Everlight company's intensive quality-control system, and that it ignited when it did only because, at the moment when S struck it, it was hit by a freak burst of high-energy cosmic rays-in which case it seen1S plausible to conclude that S . didn't know that the match would ignite when it was struck after all. The matter, however, is not quite as simple as it might seem. In the present case, for instance, an advocate of the "no-false-Ien1mas" constraint might argue that although S did not make explicit use of any false premises, at least one false belief implicitly played an essential role in his reasoning. For, what S actually believed, the objection continues, was not simply that the next Everlight match he struck would ignite when it was struck. What S believed was surely that the next Everlight he struck would ignite when it was struck because it was struck, and, if that is so, then he arguably did make essential use, if only tacitly or implicitly, of the ex hypothesi false premise that striking the next Everlight would cause it to ignite. One of the strengths of Fogelin's analysis of knowledge and Gettier problems is that it allows him to pass beyond such conlpeting considerations of intuitive plausibility and resolve the question of the adequacy of the "nofalse-lemmas" proposal on theoretical grounds. For, what makes it possible for someone to be epistemically responsible in coming to believe something on grounds that do not establish its truth, he argues (PR 21-2), is the nonmonoticity of any ampliative inference: acquiring additional information call lead us to downgrade our assessment of the evidential strength (perhaps better, the evidential value) of previously accepted propositions without leading us to change our minds about the truth of any of them. If this is right, it fol- . lows that the use of false lemmas, whether explicit or tacit, cannot be essential to Gettier problems. To appreciate Fogelin's poillt consider, for instance, Carl Ginet's "Potemkin barns" thought-experiment: One clear and sunny day S is driving through Fakebarn County. From the window of his car he sees what he takes to be a barn about ten nletres from the road. "There's a handsome barn," he thinks. S's view is unobstructed, and he has no reason to suppose that there is anything abnormal about either his own perceptual competences or current perceptual conditions. He knows what a barn looks like and never confuses barns with other sorts of buildings. It is entirely reasonable to conclude, then, that S justifiably believes that there is a barn about ten metres from the road. 139
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And he is correct. That is, what he sees is a nice-looking barn about ten n1etres from the road. His justified belief is thus true and, furthermore, we can add for the benefit of hard-core epistemic externalists, it has even been produced by normal and norn1ally reliable mechanisms; that is, by light reflected from a barn impinging on S's retina, and so on. It seems entirely plausible to conclude, then, that S knows that there is a barn about ten metres from the road. What S does not know, however, the thought-experiment continues, is that a movie company has built a number of barn fa~ades in Fakebarn County. When viewed from the road, these "Potemkin barns" are con1pletely indistinguishable from real barns. This additional information-available to us but not, we are assuming, to S-undermines the evidential value of·S's perceptual experience. The fact that there looks to be a barn about ten metres from the road is still evidence that there is a barn there, but, since there are barn fa9ades in the vicinity and there would also look to be a barn there if what was actually there was only one of those barn fa9ades, it is not as good evidence as S takes it to be. In particular, Fogelin himself suggests, our additional information entitles us to judge that S's actual evidence, the view fron1 his car window, is not sufficient to establish the truth of his belief. Our hypothetical new information, he concludes, has altered the evidential value of S's other beliefs in such a way that they no longer suffice to yield knowledge. None of those other beliefs is rendered false by our additional information, 7 but it is nevertheless arguably plausible to conclude that S does notknow that there is a barl1 about ten metres from the road. For all S knows, what he sees could be a Potemkin barn; that is, a mere barn fa9ade. Fogelin speaks, in this connection, of circumstances which call for "strict scrutiny". It is characteristic of our common justificatory procedures, he argues, to have built-in mechanisms for dealing with epistemically risky circumstances. For the most part we believe what people tell us, but some circumstances-for example, dealing with the proverbial used-car salesman-trigger the cautionary flag, "Don't believe everything you hear." We usually trust our eyes in forming beliefs about someone's actions, but at times it is worth remembering that the hand is quicker than the
7 At this point, it n1ight be objected that there is indeed something abnormal about S's perceptual circumstances-namely, he is driving through Fakebarn County-and that S consequently does rely on a false premise. But S does not need to make use of the premise that there is nothing abnormal about his perceptual circumstances. In order justifiably to believe that there is a barn about ten metres from the road, all that he needs to believe is that he has no reason to believe that his perceptual circumstances are abnormal, and, since he has never heard of Fakebarn County or barn fa9ades, that belief remains true. '
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eye. And so on. In the language of the law, certain circumstances trigger strict scrutiny. What those circumstances are and how strict the scrutiny becomes is built into our justificatory procedures. (PR 92-3) To use an analogy drawn from computer chess programs, our epistemic activities are governed by parameters that control width and depth of search. These parameters are determined by a nun1ber of factors: the complexity of the situation, the supposed risk of error, the importance of getting things right, the transaction costs of gaining new information, and so on. The important fact for the present discussion is that these parameters of search can change as circumstances change; in particular, the exigencies of enquiry can spread them wider or drive them deeper. (PR 79-80)
What happens in a Gettier case is that we are assumed to be in possession of inforn1ation which makes appropriate a higher level of scrutiny (a wider or deeper"evidential search") than that properly adopted by S in what, given his informational state, he legitimately takes to be his epistemic circumstances. The en1phases in the last sentence highlight the fact that we are not thereby supposing that there is anything irresponsible about S's epistemic conduct. Never having heard of Fakebarn County or barn fa~ades, from his own epistemic perspective S is ceteris paribus perfectly entitled to form settled judgements about the presence of nearby barns on the basis of the view from his car window. But, knowing that S is driving through a region containing Potemkin barns, we recognize that his de facto circumstances actually call for a higher level of scrutiny. However clear the day, acute S's vision, and unobstructed his line of sight, in Fakebarn County the view from a car window does not suffice to entitle one to full confidence in any claim about nearby barns. There one needs to investigate further. Acknowledging the phenomenon of heightened levels of scrlltiny suggests that knowledge-attributions should be regarded as, at least in one sense, implicitly context-dependent. Various considerations speak in favour of such a conclusion, but, so to speak, context-dependency is said in many ways, and it is important to understand what sort of context and what sort of dependency is here at issue. A series of examples may help bring the relevant ideas into proper focus. I begin with one which has the virtue of temporarily bracketing issues regarding matter-of-factual empirical k110wledge. In a book of puzzles, we find the stipulation: (P)
In the multiplication problem AT x A =GAP, each letter represents a different digit.
I tell you, truthfully, that the letter 'A' represents the digit '8', and so, justifiably (let us suppose) taking me at my word, you come to believ~, truly, ~hat 141
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this is so. Should we conclude that you then know that '1\ represents '8'7 What we need to notice is that the question is in a certain respect ambiguous or indeterminate. On the one hand, reliable testimony is certainly one way of coming to know something. So, at least to the extent that you're justified in believing me, you're entitled to believe that, in the puzzle (P), the letter '1\ represents the digit '8'. OLlr customary conception of knowledge is the conception of a transmissible condition. One way of comillg to know that the letter '1\ represents'8' , in other words, is by coming to know that I know it. If we know anything at all, then nluch, perhaps even most, of what we know we will have come to know in this way. Given the scope of even our most mundane primafacie knowledge, it could hardly be otherwise. On the other hand, however, there is surely also a temptation to say that, although you are in some sense justified in believing that '1\ represents '8' in the puzzle (P), the justification provided by my testinl0ny does not suffice to warrant the conclusion that you "really" know that '1\ represents' 8', even if I do know it. Consider the following analogy: I know (let us suppose) that the earth is about 93 million miles from the sun, although I certainly have no direct evidence for the truth of my belief to that effect. If I know that the earth is about 93 million miles from the sun, then, it is because I know that someone else knows this. I've read the figure in encyclopaedias8 and textbooks, heard it in television documentaries and from instructors in classrooms, found it on the Internet, and so on. On the basis of such experiences, I have (implicitly, but correctly) concluded that someone, presumably some astronomer, somewhere at some time has established that the earth is about 93 million miles from the sun. But I certainly haven't established it. I wouldn't blOW how to begin. That is what I meant when I said a moment ago that I have no direct evidence for the truth of the proposition in question. Rather, I have implicitly relied upon the fact that knowledge is transmissible; that is, that if I know that someone blOWS that p, then I blOW that p as well. And I do have-or at least I can readily locate and produce-a large quantity of evidence in support of the proposition that someone knows that the earth is about 93 million miles from tIle sun. But, despite these truisnls, in this case too, I think, there is a temptation to deny that I "really" know the approximate distance between the earth and the sun-at least not in the sense, the objection might continue, that my hypothetical astronomer knows it. 8 "sun, the intensely hot, self-luminous body of gases (mainly hydrogen and helium) at the center of the solar system. The sun is a medium-size main-sequence star. Its mean distance from the earth is defined as one astronomical unit"; "astronomical unit (AU), the mean distance between the earth and the sun. One AU is c.92,960,000 mi (149,604,970 km)". From The Concise Columbia Encyclopedia (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1991).
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What accounts for these contrasting inclinations regarding the questions of whether you know that 'A:. represents '8' in the puzzle (P) and I know that the earth is about 93 million miles from the sun, I want to suggest, is a certain indeterminacy about what I shall call contexts of enquiry. In first approximation, a context of enquiry is constituted whenever a determinate question is properly raised within the framework of a set of background beliefs, themselves not then and there in question, which render appropriate the use of particular investigative procedures, techniques, and norms of epistemic conduct-including, in Fogelin's terminology, a particular level of scrutinyin order to reach and defend an answer to that question. In the case of the distance between the earth and the sun, two (implicit) contexts of enquiry are particularly salient. One is the astronomers' context of natural scientific enquiry, where investigation aims at securing andjustifying a correct answer to the question "What is the mean distance between the earth and the sun?". An astronomer who has properly carried out the relevant observations, computations, and reasoning leading to the figure "93 million miles", we might say, thereby has available a primary justification for her belief regarding the n1ean distance of the earth from the sun. The other salient context, in contrast, is pedagogical; that is, one in which the proximate object of enquiry is the students' ability to recall and reproduce various information which they are presumed to have acquired through the testimony (broadly construed) of their teachers and texts. The appropriate method of investigation is consequently to examine them. The open question here is not astronomical, but rather, roughly, whether the students have learned the canonical answer to the astronomical question. In this context, we might say, the students have available only a deferred justification for their astronomical beliefs. That is, they are justified in holding them only if their teachers and texts are justified in promulgating them. And the justifications available to those teachers and to the authors of those texts, in turn, may themselves also be only such deferred justifications. But plainly not all justification can be deferred justification, and one of the tasks of a systematic epistemology is to explain and explore the possibility of primary justifications. Our earlier discussion of the way in which the noninferential reasonableness of perceptual beliefs admits of inferential justification will clearly provide one key element in that story. Our similar ambivalence regarding knowledge-ascriptions in the case of puzzle (P) suggests that two contexts of enquiry are implicitly at issue there as well. One is analogous to the traditional classroom context, where "rote knowledge" is what is at issue. The proximate ("pedagogical") question, in 143
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short, is whether you can state the correct answer to the (puzzle) question, "What digit is represented in (P) by the letter 'N.7". After I have told you truthfully that the letter 'N. in puzzle (P) represents the digit '8', ex hypothesi you can, but you have available only a deferred justification for your belief to that effect. The other implicit context of enquiry, then-the one correlative to the inclination to talk about "really" knowing-is presumably one in which someone has available a primary justification for his belief to that effect, and the tacit suggestion in this case is surely that I myself have available such a primary justification. What in this instance tells us what such a prin1ary justification looks like, i.e. what investigative procedures, techniques, and norms are relevant to answering the question "What digit is represented in (P) by the letter 'N.7", is the fact that what we are dealing with is (stipulated to be) a mathematical puzzle. A person has satisfied the demands of the relevant level of scrutiny, and so has available a primary justification for his belief that the letter 'N. represents the digit '8', only when he himself has solved the puzzle; that is, arrived by acceptable mathematical reasoning at an answer whose correctness he can demonstrate by established mathematical techniques. In the case of the proposition that the mean distance between the sun and the earth is approximately 93 million miles, there is a dramatic contrast between the sorts of considerations characteristically available to someone, e.g. an astronomer, who is in a position to construct a primary justification for her acceptance of that proposition and those available to someone, e.g. a student, who can at best offer a deferred justification for his correlative belief. The astronomer can appeal to the "direct" evidence supplied by appropriate observations and measurements interpreted in accordance with wellfounded theoretical principles. The student typically has no such evidence available to him. His "evidence" concerns the utterances of teachers and the contents of textbooks, and he interprets it in accordance with commonsense principles regarding testimony, broadly construed9 , along with his understanding of the nature and purposes of formal schoolroom instruction. In contrast, everyone who has read and understood the stipu.1ation (P) has available exactly the same "direct evidence" for the truth of the proposition that the letter 'N. represents the digit '8'. The difference between someone who is in a position to offer only a deferred justification for his acceptance of that proposition and someone who can construct a primary justification for the same belief does not consist in the fact that the latter is in possession of more or different considerations in support of the truth of that proposition than 9
A non-trivial matter, as Hume's well-known essay "On Miracles" usefully illustrates.
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the former. Both individuals in fact kl10W something, namely (P), which entails that 'A:. represents '8'-something whose stipulated truth ipso facto logically insulates it from itself becoming an open question for further erlquiry. (That is, it is absurd to ask whether (P) itself is true; that is, whether each letter really represents a different digit.) In that sense, they are initially in the same "informational state". The difference consists in what each has done with this c'ommon information, in the fact that one has and the other has not solved the puzzle; that is, worked out the connection between the truth of the stipulation (P) and the truth of the proposition that 'A' represents '8' by mobilizing the resources of the appropriate com-' plex, inferentially articulated system of logical al1d mathematical beliefs, operations, and principles, "intrinsic" to the puzzle-solving context. IO There is also a sense, then, in which the two individuals are in different "informational states"; for, the person who has solved the puzzle is informed about how (P) and the proposition which expresses its solution are logically connected in a way in which the individual who has only (P) and my reliable testin10ny to go on is not. lOA solution by elimination: 'N. plainly cannot represent '0' , since 'GAP' represents a non-zero product. Nor can 'N. represent ,1' , since the product in that case would be represented by 'AT'. Nor can 'N. represent' 2', since the maximum value of the product would then be 58, and 'GAP' represents a three-digit product. Suppose that 'N. represents' 3' . But, since 3 x 39 = 11 7, no substituend for 'T' can yield a product whose middle digit is a '3'. Hence 'N. cannot represent' 3' . Suppose that 'N. represents '4'. Since 40 x 4 = 160 and 49 x 4 = 196, 'G' must represent' 1'. Since GAP (= 14P) is a number evenly divisible by 4, 'P' must represent '0' or '8'. 140/4= 35 and 148/4= 37, but neither 35 x 4 = 140 nor 37 x 4 = 148 fits the given pattern. Hence 'N. cannot represent'4' . Suppose that 'N. represents '5'. Then, since 50 x 5 = 250 and 59 x 5 = 295, 'G' must represent '2'. Since GAP (= 25P) must be evenly divisible by 5, 'P' must represent '0'. But 250/5 = 50, and 50 x 5 = 250 does not fit the given pattern. Hence 'N. cannot represent' 5' . Suppose that 'N. represents '6'. Since 6 x 60 = 360 and 6 x 69 = 414, 'G' must represent '3' or '4', and, indeed, since neither 6 x 67 = 402 nor 6 x 68 = 408 fits the given pattern, '3'. Hence GAP (= 36P) must be evenly divisible by 6, but neither 60 x 6 = 360 nor 66 x 6 = 396 fits the given pattern. Hence 'N. cannot represent '6'. Suppose that 'N. represents '7'. Then since neither 7 x 70 = 490 and 7 x 71 = 497 fits the given pat tern, 'G' must represent '5'. Since GAP (= 57P) must be evenly divisible by 7, 'P' must represent '4' but 574/7 = 86, and 86 x 7 = 574 does not fit the given pattern. Hence 'N. cannot represent '7'. Suppose that 'N. represents '8'. Then since 80 x 8 = 640 and 89 x 8 = 712, 'G' must represent '6' or '7', and, indeed, since 88 x 8 (= 704) is inadmissible, '6'. Since GAP (= 68P) must be divisible by 8 without remainder, 'P' must represent '0'.680/8 = 85, and 85 x 8 = 680 fits the given pattern, so we have found one solution: 'N.¢:::>'8', 'T'¢:::>'5', 'G'¢:::>'6', and 'P'¢:::>'O'. It remains only to determine whether this answer is unique. Suppose that 'N. represents '9'. Then since 90 x 9 = 810 and 'G' cannot also represent '9', 'G' must represent '8'. Since GAP (= 89P) must be evenly divisible by 9, 'P' must represent '1'.891/9 = 99, but 99 x 9 = 891 does not fit the given pattern. Hence 'N. cannot represent' 9'. The solution 85 x 8 = 680 is thus unique.
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This last point is not limited to mathematical puzzles or relations of entailment. Consider, for instance, Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson'!! Each~ we may suppose, may be in possession of exactly the same evidence regarding the identity of a murderer. Holmes has carefully collected that evidence-footprints, cigar ashes, reports of the peculiar behaviour of the dog in the night-and Watson has diligently and faithfully chronicled his doing so. In this sense, they are in the same "informational state". Each, we may further suppose, believes, truly, that the coachman is the culprit. And finally, let us suppose that the evidence equally available to Watson and Holmes indeed strongly and sufficiently confirms their common belief that the coachman is guilty. Yet, for all that, we may stilljudge correctly that, in the context of their investigation, Holmes now knows that the coachman is the murderer, and Watson does not. For, it is consistent with all of our suppositions that only Holmes, but not Watson, believes that the coachman is the murderer on the basis o/the evidence. Only Holmes, but not Watson, has made the connection between the evidence in hand and the coachman's guilt. Only Holmes, but not Watson, for instance, has seen that the hypothesis of the coachman's guilt best explains the facts which constitute that evidence. Watson may just distrust coachmen, or, more likely, has simply made a reasonable, perhaps even an educated, guess. In this sense, that is, they are in different "informational states" . But now here comes Inspector Lestrade, and he poses the question: "Well, Holmes, I suppose you already know who committed this nefarious crime?" , and, surprisingly, Holmes answers: "No, Lestrade, not yet. But even as we speak, my brother Mycroft is conducting certain enquiries whose outcome, if I am not gravely mistaken, should settle the matter." And this may shift our epistemic perspective in a way that allows us properly to judge that what Holmes says is correct. For, introducing Inspector Lestrade can also implicitly introduce another relevant context of enquiry and thereby occasion a higher level of scrutiny-the quite special context in which the conditions of investigative success are determined by the provisions of English common law-and in that context, Holmes' first-person epistemic disclaimer can be entirely in order. Holmes, that is, may not be denying that he has enough evidence to determine the identity of the murderer-a preponderance of evidence more than adequate to convince Lestrade-but only that he has
11 The example originally appears in Roderick Firth, "Are Epistemic Concepts Reducible to Ethical Concepts?", in Alvin 1. Goldman and Jaegwon Kim (eds.), Values and Morals (Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel, 1978), pp. 215-29.
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enough evidence to demonstrate the identity of the n1urderer according to the more stringent epistemic standards of a court of law, "beyond reasonable doubt". Considerations of this sort sufficiently illustrate, I think, that Fogelin's explicit recognition of the phenomenon of a heightened level of scrutiny and of various circumstances that can trigger it is both useful and important. Combined with his observation that in Gettier cases we characteristically suppose ourselves to be privy to information that ex hypothesi is unavailable to S, 'it yields a powerful explanation of our usual conclusion in such instances that although he may have formed his de facto true belief that p with perfect epistemic propriety, S nevertheless does not know that p. I want to suggest, however, that the considerations just canvassed imply that the mechanism by which a heightened level of scrutiny leads to such a negative epistemic appraisal in fact can and should be uncoupled from the strong "adequategrounds" clause of Fogelin's own (KF) analysis of'S knows thatp'; that is, the requirement that the grounds on which S justifiably arrives at his belief that p establish the truth of what he believes. Fogelin reasons as follows: Given our additiol1al information, we recognize that S's (posited) grounds for believing that p are not sufficient to establish the truth of p. Since (on his analysis) the "adequate-grounds" clause specifies a necessary condition for the truth of'S knows that p' , it follows directly that S does not know that p (cf. PR26, 84). What is striking about this line of reasoning is that it makes no actual use of the notion of a heightened level of scrutiny. This is not an accident. What "levels of scrutiny" are about, after all, is not objective truth but the regulation of responsible epistemic behaviour. Fogelin's own discussion is brief, but suggestive. He calls our attention to Grice's conversational maxims and, in particular, to his. "rule of quality" which inter alia "tells us not to assert things for which we lack adequate evidence" (PR 198). Noting that, in a given context, the level of scrutiny or the appropriate level of adequacy will be fixed by the purposes and goals of the conversational exchange: more specifically by the standardness or nonstandardness of the setting, by the benefits of being right, by the costs of being wrong, by professional norms, and the like (PR 198)
he goes on to observe that parties to a conversational exchange will naturally adopt al1d enforce mutually recognized standards of adequacy, a practice which can be captured in a further conversational maxim: Make your conversational contributions such that they conform to the standards of adequacy mutually adopted within the conversational exchange. (PR 199) 147
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The sort of "adequacy" under discussion here, however, is plainly not the objective adequacy of available grounds or evidence to establish the truth of what is believed or asserted. The "standards of adequacy" at issue here rather vary from context to context, and failure to conform to them is not an objective shortcoming but a context-relative failure of conversational, and specifically epistemological, propriety. What a heightened level of scrutiny in particular circumstances implies is that, in those circumstances, one must do more than would otherwise be necessary in order to justifiably arrive at one's relevant beliefs; that is, in order to behave in an epistemically responsible manner. In Fakebarn County, for instance, one must leave one's car. How does this bear on Gettier problenls? Well, if our being privy to additional information not available to S-or, more generally, being in a richer infornlational state than 5, broadly construed-raises the relevant level of scrutiny, then we recognize that S's posited belief-forming conduct, although ex hypothesi irreproachable relative to the standards of adequacy appropriate to what, given his posited informational state, he was entitled to take to be his epistemic context, is epistemicaUy deficient relative to the standards of adequacy appropriate to what, given the stiptl1ations of the case, we are entitled to take to be S's epistemic context. What acknowledging the phenomenon of heightened levels of scrutiny does, in other words, is to remind us that the notion of "S's epistemic context" is itself context-relative or, as I prefer to put it, perspectival. Judgenlents regarding what S's epistemic context is depend upon the informational state of the person making them, and so, consequently, does the notion of S's having justifiably come to believe what he does; that is, the idea that S has done everything that he ought to have done in his epistemic context in order to be entitled to be fully confident in his opinion. What it's responsible to believe on given evidence always depends upon what else is known and believed. Susan Haack shares both the terminology and the thesis: Perspectivalism is the thesis that judgements of justification are inherently perspectival, in that what evidence one takes to be relevant to the degree of justification of a belief unavoidably depends on other beliefs one has; so that, since people differ in their background beliefs, they will differ in their judgement of how justified this or that belief is, the more radically, the more radically their background beliefs differ. (E&1208)
On this reading, the reason that we correctly judge that S does not blOW that p is that, given our richer informational state, we recognize that what we are (stipulatively) entitled to take to be S's epistemic circumstances demand a 148
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higher level of scrutiny than we are supposing S himself to have exercised. S, therefore, has not satisfied what, from our perspective, are the standards of performance-adequacy appropriate to his epistemic circumstances, and, hence, from our epistemic perspective, we judge that, despite his not having acted irresponsibly given the information available to him (judged from his own legitimate perspective on his epistemic circumstances), he has notjustifiably come to believe that p. What shifts from one epistemic perspective to the other, on this interpretation, is not the relationship between S's de facto grounds of belief and the truth of what he believes, but rather the specific procedural norms relevant to the assessment of his epistemic COl1duct. This contrast between appraisals of an epistemic performance in terms of two sets of procedural norms, one less and one more stringent, thus replaces Fogelin's appeal to the contrast between the "performance" and the "grounds" interpretations of the "justification"-clause, (iii). To understand Gettier cases, on this account, "deontological" considerations are all that we need. We have reached a point at which it will be fruitful to consider Barry Stroud's use of the example of the plane-spotters that he adapts from Thompson Clarke: Suppose that in wartime people must be trained to identify aircraft and they are given a quick, uncomplicated course on the distinguishing features of different planes and how to recognize them. They learn fronl their manuals, for example, that if a plane has features x, y, and w it is an E, and if it has x, Y, and z it is an F. A fully-trained and careful spotter on the job will not say that a particular plane is an F until he has found all three features, x, Y, z . .. He might even be asked how he knows it is an F and reply "Because it has x, Y, z". He has observed the plane in the sky very carefully, he has followed his training to the letter, and he is right that it has x, Y, z. There seems no doubt that he knows the plane is an F. (SPS 67)
Stroud compares this careful and conscientious spotter with an irresponsible colleague "who finds features x and y al1d simply guesses that z is probably present too, or who concludes without further thought from the presence of x and y that the plane is an F" (SPS 72). Having noted only the features x and y, the careful and conscientious spotter, in contrast, withholds judgement until he can determine whether the plane also has feature z. Bllt [after] he gets a better look and notices that the plane also has z he is no longer in doubt. "It's an F," he says, "I know it is. It has also got z, and that rules out the possibility that it is an E". (SPS 72)
We are further to suppose, however, that, while the features x, y, and z are indeed necessary for an aeroplane to be an F, they are not sufficient. There are 149
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some other aeroplanes, Gs, which also have those features. As it happens, from the point of view of the war effort, Gs are not worth worrying about, and no mention is made of them in the spotters' training manuals: The trainees were never told about them because it would have made the recognition of Fs too difficult; it is almost in1possible to distinguish an F from a G from the ground. (SPS67)
In these circumstances, Stroud concludes, we immediately see that even the most careful airplane-spotter does not know that a plane he sees is an F even though he knows that it has x, y, z. For all he knows, it might be a G. Just as he did not know the plane was an F when he had found only features x and y-for all he knew then, it might have been an E-so he does not know now that it is an F because all the features he has now found are also present on another kind of airplane. (SPS 68)
This, of course, is an example of a Gettier case in which the subject, i.e. the conscientious plane-spotter, arrives at this true belief with the help of a "false lemma"; namely, a premise to the effect that having the features x, y, and z is both necessary and sufficient for an aeroplane to be an F. What Stroud wants to establish by appeal to the example is that a sceptical philosopher who insists that it is a condition of matter-of-factual knowledge in general that certain mere possibilities be kl10wn not to obtain-paradigmatically, the possibility that one is dreaming-is not imposing a new or higher epistemic standard or constructing an unreasonably strict conception of such knowledge. The fact that we do not normally eliminate, or even consider, innumerable outre possibilities "which nevertheless strictly speaking must be known not to obtain if we are to kl10W the sorts of things we claim to know" (SPS 69) shows only that our normal epistemic claims andprocedures are fitted to the practical contingencies of everyday life. In contrast, "the philosophical investigation of our knowledge is concerned with whether and how it is true that we know, whether and how the conditions necessary and sufficient for our knowing things about the world are fulfilled" (SPS 69). In this instance, it is again clear that we are dealing with (at least) two informational states and, correlatively, two epistemic perspectives, which impose, in Fogelin's idiom, differentially stringent levels of scrutiny. In one sense, Stroud obviously recognizes this. The performance of a conscientious plane-spotter, he suggests, is not open to criticism; nor, he says, is the spotter's recognition "as a contribution to the war effort": 150
Everyday Knowledge We might even be tempted to say something like, "As far as his training goes, he knows it is an F", or "He knows that according to his manual it is an F". But if we know the facts about Gs ... we cannot say simply "He knows it is an F" ... [We] recognize that that would not be true. (SPS 68)
Here Stroud himself nl0re-or-Iess explicitly contrasts two distinct contexts of enquiry. One is that of the plane-spotters, who are ignorant of the existence of Gs. Here the appropriate procedure for the spotters to follow in investigating and settling on answers to open questions regarding the identification of visible aircraft in flight-"What kind of a plane is that?"; "Is that an F?"-is, so to speak, deliberately restricted and artificial. For good and sufficient practical reasons (we are to suppose), the spotters are trained to "go by the book" , and so, inter alia, to report that an aeroplane is an F when and only when they have determined that it has the three features x, y, z. When they are correct, he suggests-i.e. when the plane in fact is an F and not a G-then, from that epistemic perspective, it will also be in order for them to say that they know the idel1tity of the plane. On this interpretation, the phrases "according to his manual" and "as far as his training goes" do not cancel, but rather contextualize, a knowledgeascription. They do not tell us that certain standards of adequacy have not been met-specifically, that the spotters' grounds are not sufficient to establish the truth of his belief; rather, they indicate what standards of adequacy are relevant to assessing the propriety of the plane-spotters' epistemic self ascriptions. In this respect they modify the verb 'to know' not, as Stroud implicitly suggests, analogously to the way that the adjectives 'counterfeit' and 'stage' and 'toy' modify the noun 'money', but rather analogously to the way that the adjectives 'antique' and 'Confederate', and 'French' do. There were (or are) contexts, not our own, in which antique, Confederate, or French money nevertheless could (or can) legitimately be used to make payments and purchases; not so in the case of counterfeit, stage, or toy money. But if this is one context of enquiry operative in Clarke's and Stroud's example, it is less clear what we are supposed to take as the second, contrasting context. The relevant open question presumably remains the same: e.g. "What kind of plane is that?" or "Is that an F?". But from what epistemic perspective, by appeal to what standards of adequacy and with respect to what level of scrutiny, do we legitinlately judge that the (correct) answers given by the spotters to those questions are not expressions of knowledge? We can make progress here by asking when we can "say simply" of someone that he knows something; for example, that p. Under what circumstances, that is, are we entitled to eschew such qualifiers as 151
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"according to the manual" or "as far as his training goes" and say of son1eone only that he knows that p? At this point it is both useful and important to recall that our customary concept of knowledge is the concept of a transmissible condition. This much, at least, must then be true: If we are entitled to judge, without qualification, that someone else knows that p, then we are also entitled to judge, also without qualification, that we ourselves know that p. If we say of someone only that he knows that p, then, in the absence of further indications, what we tacitly presuppose is precisely our own context of enquiry (actual or hypothetical) vis-it-vis the question whether p. (Compare: If we say of something only that it is money, then, in the absence of further considerations, we are indicating that we can legitimately use it, here and now, to make payments and purchases.) Correlatively, the relevant procedures and standards of adequacy for investigating the question whether p implicit in such epistemic ascriptions are just the procedures and standards for investigating and closing such questions that we (do or would) acknowledge or adopt. What I want to propose, then, is that, as Fogelin suggests is characteristically true of Gettier cases, the relevant epistemic perspective to contrast with that of Stroud's plane-spotters here just is our own. On this interpretation, the difference between "As far as his training goes, he knows it is an F" or "He knows that according to his manual it is an F" , on the one hand, and "He knows it is an F (full stop)" on the other, is the perspectival, bookkeeping difference between crediting son1eone with having done what, given his informational state, he legitimately concludes is sufficient to entitle him to confidently judge of some observed aeroplane that it is an F and conceding that he has done what, given our richer informatiol1al state, we legitimately conclude is required to be in that normative position. In each case, we commit ourselves to the propriety of his performance according to some standards of adequacy. Only in the latter, however, do we commit ourselves as well to the correctness of the conviction in which that performance issues; for, only in the latter case are the relevant standards inter alia our own. We keep, so to speak, two sets of books-one in the currency of his epistemic context, and one in the currerlCY of our own. 12 But, in this instance, what epistemic context is our own? That is, in the dialectical setting of Stroud's discussion, just who are we? It is crucial to recognize that this question admits of two quite different answers.
12 Such "multiple bookkeeping"-in his terms, multiple deontic score-keeping-is a cornerstone of Robert Brandom's brilliant and sophisticated analysis of propositional content and the expressive functions of logic in terms of assertional commitments and entitlements, in Making It Explicit.
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The most straightforward answer is: We are normal observers, otherwise quite like the plane-spotters, who are also fully informed about Gs. This answer groups us, for instance, with the authors of the training manual and the teachers of the spotter trainees, among those "outsiders", as Stroud puts it (SPS 81), who kn.ow that the trainillg manual is not correct. And it is quite true that determining that an aeroplane has the features x, y, z does not entitle sonleone who is privy to this additional collateral information to conclude that the plane is an F. The relevant procedures nlay still require us carefully to check for the presence of x, y, z, but it will also plainly require us to do more; namely, to undertake whatever further steps are necessary to distinguish Fs from Gs. A higher level of scrutiny can be demanded of us precisely because the notion of peifOrmance-justification is perspectival, and, on this interpretation' our judgement is made from the perspective of a context of enquiry in which we ex hypothesi have more relevant information about aeroplanes than the spotters do. But this is not the contrast of perspectives that Stroud wants and needs for his (sceptical) purposes. What Stroud proposes to contrast with the epistemic situation of the plane-spotters is an "external" point of view particularly characteristic of traditional philosophical enquiry. The answer to the question 'Who are we?' that Stroud wants us to give here, in short, is: We are epistemologists; that is, "reflective" enquirers into "the objective conditions of knowledge". What we are to focus on here, in other words, is not the fact that we ex hypothesi know nlore about aeroplanes. What we are rather to suppose is that we know more about knowing. It is because [a spotter] believes in [his manual's] correctness that he thinks he knows the plane is an F. We who have a more objective understanding of the spotter's position know that he does not know. We are in a position that he is not in with respect to one of the facts essential to his knowing. We are therefore in a better position for determining whether "He knows it is an F" is objectively true or not. (SPS 81)
What Stroud would have us contrast with the epistemic context of the planespotters, whose open questions all have the general form "What sort of aircraft is that?", in short, is a context of enquiry structured by the question "What is· knowledge?". This answer groups us with, for instance, Plato, Descartes, Gettier, Sosa, Fogelin, and Stroud himself; that is, with the diverse epistemological thinkers who variously engage the questions "Under what conditions is it true that someone knows something about the world?" and "Do we ourselves satisfy those conditiollS?". The correlative enquiry, as Stroud sees it, will then include 153
Everyday Knowledge a quest for an objective or detached understanding and explanation of the position we are objectively in. What is seen to be true from a detached' external' standpoint might not correspond to what we take to be the truth about our position when we consider it 'internally', from within the practical contexts which give our words their social point. Philosophical skepticism says the two do not correspond; we never know anything about the world around us, although we say or imply that we do hundreds of times a day. (SPS 81)
What is plainly right about Stroud's discussion here is that, if when it is true that p we are nevertheless able to make sense of a difference between "S is justified in confidently believing (or in unqualifiedly asserting) that p" and" S knows that p", we must be contrasting, if only in1plicitly, S's epistemic perspective with another, distinct from it. But it does not follow from this fact alone that we must be in command of a uniquely "detached" philosophical context of enquiry, which somehow brackets not only specific practical concerns but everything that we ourselves know about the world that we and S both inhabit, a single" detached" perspective which contrasts simultaneously with all "practical" or, better, "situated" ones. For, how are we to understand Stroud's phrase "the position we are objectively in"? The notion of objectivity as Stroud himself understands it appears to be a perfectly commonsensical one. It is a conception "of things being a certain way whether anyone is affected by them or interested in them or knows or believes anything about them or not" (SPS 78): In seeking lmowledge we are trying to find out what is true, to ascertain how the world is in this or that respect . . . [What] we aspire to and eventually claim to know is the objective truth or falsity of, for example, "There is a mountain more than five thousand metres high in Africa. "13
In this sense of 'objective', there are also objective truths about what inf()rmation particular persons have or are in a position to acquire, and, crucially for the present discussion, about whether son1eone's epistemic resources and activities have been artificially restricted in a way which inhibits his coming to have information in fact possessed by son1eone else. We can thus perfectly well distinguish "the position we are objectively in" as informed outsiders vis-a-vis the existence of aircraft having features x, y, z which are not Fs from the equally "objective" position of the plane-spotters who, for good practical 13 According to my reference materials, there are, depending upon how one counts, either three or four: I(ilimanjaro, in north-east Tanzania, has two peaks over 5,000 metres: Kibo (5,895 m.) and Mawenzi (5,354 m.); Mount Kirinyaga, in Kenya (also called Mount Kenya), is 5,199 m. high; and Margherita, on the Uganda-Zaire border, checks in at 5,109 m. .
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reasons (we are to suppose), have not been made privy to this information; that is, who, viewed from the perspective of informed outsiders, have deliberately been kept ignorant of the existence of Gs. And this contrast is quite sufficient to explain our divergent intuitions regarding (self- and other-)knowledge-ascriptions to the less well-informed plane-spotters; sufficient, in other words, to account for Stroud's philosophical data. What we need to ask, then, is whether there is any other reason to suppose that there is some privileged description of "the position we are objectively in" which abstracts from all "situated" epistemic perspectives. For, Stroud plainly intends his own contrastive "we" here, the "we" of "we epistemologists", to be in this respect entirely general, equivalent to "we human beings" (or perhaps even "we sentient and rational beings"). The idea is that there is just one "position" that everyone is "objectively in", but only we epistemologists reflectively so. Only we epistemologists, that is, are supposed to command a clear view of the one position that all of us are "objectively in". But if a "position" is what I have been calling a context of enqlliry, then we human beings are objectively in many positions-and we philosophers have historically proved to be among the last to recognize this truism and its implications. We can, for instance, distinguish the epistemic project of the plane-spotters relative to the war effort from the epistemic project of someone, e.g. a psychologist studying visual acuity and perceptual reliability, whose interest is in the question of whether this or that observer has correctly identified an aeroplane in flight as an E, an F, a G, or whatever is detached from thoseparticular, i.e. military, "practical concerns". The psychologist's enquiry is theoretical in a way in which that of the plane-spotters ex hypothesi is not, and so, in one sense, it is "detached" from what Stroud calls "the exigencies of action, cooperation and communication" and "the practical social purposes served by our assertions and claims to know things" (SPS 71). But to acknowledge the possibility of this sort of "detachment" is not to concede that this, or any, enquiry can be "detached" from "the constraints of social practice" (SPS 71) .completely and per se; that is, that enquiry can be "detached" in the sense of being totally a-contextual or trans-contextual. Michael Williams 14 is one of the few philosophers who has this point plainly in view: Detachment from practical projects and limitations may yield purely theoretical enquiry. But purely theoretical enquiry is not, in and of itself, epistemological enquiry ... If we are to assess our knowledge of the world in its entirety, we must set aside not 14
In Unnatural Doubts (UD) (Cambridge, Mass. and Oxford: Blackwell, 1991).
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Everyday Knowledge only all practical ... interests but all our ordinary beliefs about the world and our relation to it. We must" detach" ourselves from the commitments implicit in our everyday outlook or our assessment will not be properly general. By sliding from detachment as the taking up of a purely theoretical attitude to detachment as a step outside all knowledge of the world, the sceptic creates the impression that "detachn1ent" exposes to view epistemic constraints inherent in our concepts alone. He creates the impression that a withdrawal from practical concerns is enough to make knowledge an object of theory. (UD 193)15
Insisting that questions of justification and ascriptions of knowledge are perspectival in the sel1se I have been elucidating, then, need not obliterate the distinction, upon which Stroud reasonably insists, between our (third-person) judgement that son1eone, S, is (merely) warranted in claiming to know that p and our (third-person) judgement that S actually knows that p. The difference is indeed perspectival, but it is not the difference between S's perspective and a "detached" philosophical "view from nowhere" (in Thomas Nagel's pregnant phrase). It is simply the difference between a judgement made from the perspective of (our legitimate conception of) what, given his informational state, S properly takes his epistemic circumstances to be and one made from the perspective of a determinate conception, given our ex hypothesi richer informational state, of our own epistemic context, actual or hypothetica1. What is at work in our rejecting the third-person counterparts of S's epistemic self-ascriptions is not "detachment" but transmissibility. For, circumstances in which I can legitimately judge that S knows that p (full stop) are a fortiori circumstances in which I can legitin1ately judge that I (consequently) know that p as well. Nor, returning to Stroud's example, need acknowledging in this way the perspectivality of knowledge- and justifiability-ascriptions obliterate the distinction between theory and practice. If Gs are rare and harmless enough, and Fs frequent and dangerous enough, then, given the exigencies of the war effort, upon determining that an aeroplane has x, y, z, we knowledgeable outsiders would perhaps also report having sighted an F, especially if, as Stroud supposes, "it is almost impossible to distinguish an F from a G from the ground" . If Gs are rare and harmless enough and Fs frequent enough, then it is certainly reasonable to believe that an aeroplane with features x, y, z is an F, and in wartime reasonable belief can more than suffice for action. In that 15 Another useful passage: "[Since] an interest in truth for its own sake is available to physicists and historians, as much as to philosophers, it follows that an explanation of pure enquiry simply in terms of non-instrumentality and cost-indifference will not explain how taking up the stance of the pure inquirer involves us in a new, distinctively philosophical project" (UD 213).
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case, the standards of adequacy appropriate for confident belief in our informationally richer context of enquiry, although in theory different, need not in practice be set any more stringently than they are deliberately set in the spotter's manual. But recall Holmes, Watson, and Lestrade. Suppose that, rare and harn1less as Gs are, they are also used to transport innocent civilian noncombatants and prisoners of war, and that planes identified as Fs are ipsofacto immediately subjected to devastating anti-aircraft fire. 16 Then, whether or not we decide that the war effort in toto still justifies our simplified spotter training manuals, we knowledgeable insiders are surely likely to be more careful with our own reports. The guarded idioms of appearance, likelihood, reasonable belief, and probability are tailor-made for such situations. In one sense, Fogelin agrees with these conclusions; in another, however, he aligns himself with Stroud. The extent of his agreement is indicated by his response to a case that he describes as follows: Suppose that Smith is worried whether her brakes are safe. To test thenl, she drives at a moderate speed and then hits the brakes quite sharply. When the car comes to a snl00th stop, she concludes that they are safe. Let's suppose ... (i) this is a good rough-and-ready way of testing brakes, and (ii) Smith's brakes are, in fact, safe. Thus, by applying a standard procedure and by getting the correct result, Smith can ... be said to know that her brakes are safe. Next suppose that Jones, an auto mechanic, tests the brakes in the same way, and then concludes, as Smith did, that the brakes are safe. Jones, however, knows that this test, though reliable in a rough-and-ready way, sometinles does not detect faulty brakes. Given the epistenlic irresponsibility of his performance. . . we are inclined to say that Jones, even though it is true that the brakes are safe, does not know this. This leads to the seemingly paradoxical result that, given the same evidence, an amateur can know something that an expert cannot. (PR 97-8)
This case, Fogelin reports, was formulated by Fred Michaels as a challenge to the (KF) account of knowledge. But, as Fogelin goes on to point out, the paradoxical result for which Michaels argues is not, in fact, a consequence of his views: If asked what I think about this situation, I would say that neither Smith nor Jones knew that the brakes were safe, for even though they are safe, thanks to Michaels, I am privy to special information about the proper way of testing brakes. (PR 98)
This response is entirely consonant with the view that we have been exploring. Michaels' case offers a contrast between two informational 16
lowe this example to Mark Kaplan.
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states-Smith's and Jones's-and, correlatively, between two contexts of enquiry, in each of which the operative question is "Are Smith's car's brakes safe?". Jones is posited to be in possession of relevant information regarding brake testing over and above that assumed to be available to Smith. The case is thus structurally identical to that of the plane-spotters and the knowledgeable outsiders, and, analogous to that case, we may conclude that, given what, in her informational state, Smith properly took to be her epistemic circumstances, she was legitimately entitled to claim to know that her brakes are safe. But since knowledge is transmissible, we will conclude that Smith does know that her brakes are safe only when we are prepared to judge that, given the information ill the case description, we ourselves know that Smith's brakes are safe. And this will be true only if we judge, from our epistemic perspective, . that Smith has done everything that she ought to have done in order to be entitled to be fully confident in her opinion that they are. As Fogelin correctly observes, however, that is not the case. In our richer informational state, we, like Jones, know that more needs to be done in order to warrant the confident conviction that the brakes are safe than Smith is stipulated to have done. We recognize that (what are stipulated to be) Smith's and Jones's epistemic circumstances call for a higher level of scrutiny than either has ex hypothesi exercised in investigating the safety of Snlith's brakes, and so we conclude, correctly, that neither Smith nor Jones knows that the brakes are safe. Fogelin evidently agrees, then, that unqualified attributions of knowledge are (always) made (only) from our own epistemic perspective. Where he aligns himself with Stroud, however, is in his sceptical conviction that consideration of mere possibilities can undermine knowledge. 011 first encounter just the opposite may seem to be the case, since Fogelin takes pains to distinguish "hyperbolic doubts", resting on the sort of "systematically uneliminable possibilities" generated by classical sceptical scenarios, from both"eliminable but inlpractical doubts" , resting on "extremely unlikely possibilities" which could be eliminated "but for which it would be a mark of obsessiveness to do so", and "eliminable legitimate doubts", resting on "real possibilities" (PR 91): Properly understood, legitimate doubts are defined from within an epistemic practice. A legitimate doubt is one we should consider and remove before we make our knowledge claim. Failing this, we will not be said to know even if, by the grace of nature, our belief turns out to be true. (PR 93)
And he concedes that it is ... a plain fact that we often make serious knowledge clain1s in the face of nonexeluded remote (and sometimes not so remote) undercutting possibilities. (PR 92) 158
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That is: when people claim to know things, they do not do so in the belief that they have eliminated all eliminable refuting possibilities, nor do their auditors suppose that they believe this (PR 95)
Quite early on, however, we noted Fogelin's insistence that the mere consideration of such possibilities can raise the level of scrutiny in such a way that we are no longer willing to continue to advance such serious knowledgeclaims. And that implies, he argues, that we do not need to introduce traditional sceptical scenarios in order to generate sceptical problems: Given any empirical assertion, it is always possible-indeed always easy-to point to some uneliminated (though eliminable) possibility that can defeat this clain1. Nothing like brains in vats are needed to achieve this purpose. It doesn't even take a great deal of ingenuity to raise these skeptical doubts. A reliance on examples involving papier-mache will usually be sufficient. Dwelling on uneliminated defeators can produce skeptical doubts no less strong than those produced by skeptical scenarios. If anything, the situation is worse with uneliminated but eliminable defeators. With respect to them, no transcendental style of argument will work; the only way to eliminate these defeators is actually to eliminate them. The recognition that we make knowledge claims without doing so gives one as robust a skeptical challenge as one would like. (PR 193)
Our reluctance to endorse our normal serious knowledge-claims, however, Fogelin suggests, lasts only as long as we sustain this "intense view of things": When we return to practical affairs of life, our standards will return to their normal moderate level and this disinclination will disappear. (PR 94)
Fogelin, then, draws a distinction between various "situated" epistemic contexts within which we call distinguish legitinlate doubts, i.e. those which "we should consider and remove before we make our knowledge claim" (PR 93), from "impractical" doubts, which we (in principle) could but needn't eliminate before properly claiming to know, and an "intense view of things", detached from the "practical affairs of life", within which consideration of such remote defeating possibilities raises the level of scrutiny in such a way as to undermine the knowledge-claims we are otherwise prepared to advance. Properly to undermine the knowledge-claims we are otherwise prepared to advance? On our first encounter with this sort of sceptical doubt I proposed that we are free to answer "No" to this last question. A process of making salient mere possibilities can successfully undermine knowledge, I wrote, 159'
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only if it can establish that son1e necessary condition for knowledge has not been met. But Fogelin argues that, given his (KF) analysis of knowledge: (KF)
Knowledge that p is a belief that p justifiably arrived at on grounds that establish the truth of p.
that is arguably the case, for "it seems entirely natural to ask how grounds can establish the truth of somethitlg when at the sanle time there are undercutting possibilities that have not been eliminated" (PR 94). Fogelin's conviction that S knows that p only if the grounds on which S believes that p are adequate to establish the truth of p is, of course, a result of his attempt to give an analysis of knowledge in the classical sense; that is, to specify necessary and sufficient conditions for the truth of'S knows that p'. Like Stroud, Fogelin proposes to distinguish such truth-conditions from conditions of correctness for knowledge-ascriptions or knowledge-claims. There is, he concedes, a fact or set of facts in virtue of which an epistemic claim will be correctly deemed true from within a justificatory framework functioning at a particular level of scrutiny . . . [From.] within a justificatory framework, episternic claims will be said to be determinately true or false, depending on the facts of the matter. From within the justificat0ry framework we will say that it is a fact of the matter that the person knows-or perhaps doesn't. (PR 95)
This concession, however, he insists, does not relativize knowledge to "justificatory frameworks". It simply describes how epistemic claims operate within such frameworks. Thus Fogelin is not willing to say that S is justified in believing that p if S, using a justificatory procedure that Fogelin himself endorses, has based his belief on grounds that Fogelin hin1self accepts: If S's epistemic performance satisfies these conditions, I will think it reasonable for me to hold that S is justified in his belief, but that, of course, does not entail that S is justified in his belief. There is nothing special about my justificatory fran1ework. (PR 96)
But this is a peculiar remark. Suppose that Fogelin actually believes that S's epistemic perfornlance does satisfy the specified conditions. Then from Fogelin's epistemic perspective, S surely is justified in his belief that p. For, if the context of enquiry is one in which the leading question is whetherp, then, from that perspective, S will have done everything that he ought to have done in order to be entitled to be fully confide11t in his opinion that p. Fogelin's contrary judgement that S may, for all that, not be justified in his belief that p must consequently be made from some other epistemic perspective; that is, one appropriate to a different context of enquiry, structured by a different leading 160
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question. And the natural conclusion to draw at this point is that the relevant context of enquiry is the supposed uniquely "detached" context ostensibly generated by the philosophical question· "What is knowledge?" For Fogelin as for Stroud, in other words, it is epistemological reflection on the nature of knowledge which produces the "special" context that gives rise to sceptical doubts. Fogelin thus aligns himself with the idea that, as David Lewis notoriously put it 17 , "epistemology must destroy knowledge", or, as Michael Williams suggests, that "the first fatal step on the road to scepticism is taken as soon as we ask the basic epistemological questions" (UD 7). Indeed, commenting on Lewis, Fogelin agrees that the "theory of knowledge, pursued in the context of the unlimited range of defeators that pure reflection can generate, will inevitably lead to skepticism of a radical kind" .18 At this point in the dialectic, both Lewis and Williams draw contextualist conclusions. In contrast to Fogelin, both want to hold that the knowledgeclaims that we make in ordinary, i.e. non-philosophical, contexts are often true. Thus Lewis writes that "In the strict context of epistemology we know nothing, yet in laxer contexts we know a lot" ("EK" 551), and, envisioning two epistemologists on a bush-walk mentioning all sorts of far-fetched possibilities for error, he proposes that "by attending to these normally ignored possibilities they destroy the knowledge they normally possess". Analogously, Willian1s suggests that: The sceptic's fallacy is that he takes the discovery that, in the study, knowledge of the world is impossible for the discovery, in the study, that knowledge is impossible generally (UD 359)19
and argues that to say that certain propositions cannot be made the object of explicit knowledgeclaims is not to say that they assert things that we can never know to be true. If knowledge can be undermined by reflection, and if bringing certain propositions to thefore 17 On p. 560 of "Elusive Knowledge" ("EK"), Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 74 (1996), pp.549-67. 18 In "Contextualism and Externalism: Trading One Form of Skepticism in for Another", Philosophical Issues, 10 (2000),43-57. 19 In more detail: "The sceptic takes himself to have discovered, under the conditions of philosophical reflection, that knowledge of the world is impossible. But in fact, the most he has discovered is that knowledge of the world is impossible under the conditions ofphilosophical reflection. It is not human psychology that prevents scepticism's escaping from the study into the street but the shift in epistemological constraints that accompanies a shift in the direction of inquiry. The discovery that knowledge of the world is impossible under one set of conditions does not license the conclusion that it is never possible, even when conditions are entirely different" (UD 130).
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Everyday Knowledge is apt to project us into a reflective context, we will have a peculiar epistemic relation to those propositions, knowing them to be true so long as we let them go unmentioned. But a peculiar epistemic relation is not a non-epistemic relation. (UD 355)
In general, an epistemological contextualist holds that the truth of epistemic claims depends on contextually determined standards. Like indexical sentences, the sentences expressing such claims will make statements having different truth-values in different contexts. Just as one speaker can utter "I am hungry" ("It is raining here", etc.) and another "I am not hungry" ("It is not raining here" , etc.), and both thereby say something true, so one speaker can utter "S knows that p" and another "S does not know that p", and both thereby say something true.. Our everyday knowledge is "elusive" (Lewis) or "unstable" (Williams) in the sense that the mere consideration of sceptical possibilities projects us into a context within which it is false to say that we know anything about the world. In everyday contexts, however, we do know (much of) what we think we know, and a great deal more besides. 2o Is my present "perspectivalist" story a contextualist account of knowledge in this received sense? That is, do I myself hold that'S knows that p' behaves like an indexical expression whose utterance in different contexts can result in claims differing in truth value? Do I acknowledge a distinction between the circumstances in which I am entitled to judge that S knows that p and the circumstances in which S does know that p? I(eith DeRose explains the central contextualist contention in terms of an explicitly indexical illustration: The contextualist believes that certain aspects of the context of an attribution or denial of knowledge affect its content. Knowledge claims, then, can be compared to other sentences containing context-sensitive words, like "here". One hour ago, I was in my office. Now I am in the word processing room. How can I truly say where I was an hour ago? I cannot truly say, "I was here," because I wasn't here; I was there. The meaning of 'here' is fixed by the relevant contextual factors (in this case, my location) of the utterance, not by my location at the time being talked about. ("CKA" 925)21
20 Epistemic contextualism is nowadays fairly popular. Besides Lewis and Williams, its leading 'exponents include Stewart Cohen ("Knowledge, Context, and Social Standards", Synthese, 73 (1987), pp. 3-26; "How to be a Fallibilist" ,PhilosophicaIPerspectives, 2 (1988), pp. 91-123) and Keith DeRose ("Contextualism and Knowledge Attributions, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 52 (1992), pp. 913-29; "Solving the Skeptical Problem", PhilosophicalReview 104 (1995), pp. 1-52). An early formulation can be found in David Annis, "A Contextual Theory of Epistemic Justification", American Philosophical Quarterly, 15 (1978), pp. 213-19. 21 Keith DeRose, "Contextualism and Knowledge Attributions" ("CKA"), Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 52 (1992), pp. 913-29.
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Given this understanding, DeRose contends, a contextualist need not and should not countenance a dialogue22 of the following sort: A: Is that a zebra? B: Yes, it is a zebra. A: But can you rule out its being merely a cleverly painted mule? B: No, I can't. A: So, you admit you didn't know it was a zebra? B: No, I did know then that it was a zebra. But after your question, I no longer know.
Rather, if in the context of the conversation the possibility of painted mules has been mentioned, and if the mere mention of this possibility has an effect on the conditions under which someone can be truly said to "know" , then any use of "know" (or its past tense) is so affected, even a use in which one describes one's past condition. B cannot truly say, "I did know then that it was a zebra"; that would be like my saying "I was here." B can say, "My previous kno\vledge claim was true," just as I can say, "My previous location claim was true." Or so I believe. But saying these things would have a point only if one were interested in the truth-value of the earlier claim, rather than in the question of whether in the present contextually determined sense one knew and knows, or didn't and doesn't. ("CKA" 925)
Although it is a thesis that we have not yet seen any reason to accept, let us temporarily suppose that merely mentioning the possibility of cleverly painted mules does in fact raise the relevant level of scrutiny. Call this Thesis (M). What does the present "perspectivalist" view then have to say about the dialogue between A and B? Well, on that view, whatever (llnqualified) attributions or denials of knowledge I make here and now are made from my present epistemic perspective, and, since I have so to speak "overheard" 1\.s mentioning painted mules to B, then, given (M), from that perspective I will conclude that, at the end of their conversation, B does not know that the animal in view is a zebra. Ex hypothesi, he has not done everything that, fron1 my present perspective, I legitimately judge ought to be done in order to be entitled confidently to believe that it is one (e.g. he has not checked for cleverly painted n1ules). And for the same reason, he didn't know it was a zebra at the beginning of the conversation. B doesn't know, and B didn't know. Since he claims to have known, what he says is false. So far, then, I am in agreement with DeRose. 22 Cited (at "CKA" 924) from Palle Yourgrau, "Knowledge and Relevant Alternatives", Synthese, 55 (1983), pp. 175-90. The well-known zebra/mule example comes from Fred Dretske, "Epistemic Operators", Journal ofPhilosophY,67 (1970), pp. 1007-23.
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But DeRose also holds that B can say-presumably, correctly say-"My previous knowledge-claim was true", and, although B doesn't actually make any "previous knowledge claim" in the dialogue as given, what DeRose means seems clear enough: If what B had said at the beginning of his conversation with A was "Yes, I know that it's a zebra", then B could now correctly say that that knowledge-claim was true (in the context in which it was made). But I do not think that this is correct. For what was B's previous knowledgeclaim? B's previous utterance, we are now assuming, was "I know that it's a zebra", but what knowledge-claim did B use those words to make? What did B assert when he said, "I know that it's a zebra"? The most natural answer, surely, is that he asserted that he (then and there) knew that the animal in view was a zebra; but if that is what B asserted, then what he asserted was false. As we have just seen, both DeRose and I agree that, given (M), B did not know at the beginning of his conversation with A that the animal in view was a zebra. And if this is so then B cannot now correctly say that his previous knowledgeclaim was true. It wasn't. What I would say about B's previous 1a10wledge clain1 is what I earlier said about Clarke's and Stroud's responsible plane-spotter; that is, that, although his (unqualified) epistemic self-ascription was false, from what he legitimately took to be his epistemic perspective, it can nevertheless have been in order for him to make it. (Here, given Thesis (M), Ns mention of painted mules plays the scrutiny-level-raising role played earlier by the information about Gs ex hypothesi available to the authors of the plane-spotters' manual and so also to us.) This is a judgement of epistemic propriety, but contextual epistemic propriety is one thing and contextual truth quite another. Contrast DeRose's explicitly indexical example. An hour ago, DeRose, who is now (let us suppose) here with us in the word-processing room, uttered, in his office, "I am here". Now he says "My previous location-claim was true"-and so it was. For, what DeRose asserted when, an hour ago in his office, he uttered the words "I am here" was that he was (then and there) in his office. (Imagine a concrete context: Someone enquires of DeRose's secretary, in the adjoining room, whether the professor is in his office. "I don't know," she replies, "I just arrived". Overhearing the conversation through his halfopen door, DeRose calls out, "I am here".) There are, in short, significant disanalogies between the behaviours of indexical and epistemic expressions. Since "perspectivalism" explicitly does and contextualism evidently does not acknowledge those disanalogies, the two theses are distinct. Fogelin also decisively rejects contextualisn1 in the received sense, but for different reasons. Since what'S knows that p' means is that S justifiably 164
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believes that p on grounds that establish the truth of p, the fact that S's grounds are arguably always inadequate to establish the truth of p whenever p is a fallible claim about the world will imply that it is always simply false that S knows that p. Fogelin himself expresses his views more tentatively, as an inclination rather than a conclusion: This brings us . . . to the question whether there is a fact of the matter that determines whether an epistemic claim is determinately true or determinately false. My answer is that my analysis implies nothing one way or another on this matter, and this is precisely because nothing in this analysis either privileges or refuses to privilege particular justificatory frameworks. For all that has been said so far, there may be one ultimate justificatory framework that grounds all others. There may be a plurality of justificatory frameworks that ground various domains of knowledge. There may be no justificatory franlework that stands up under the unlinlited heightening of scrutiny. In fact, this third possibility strikes me as being correct, but that is not something that follows from the analysis of knowledge claims I have presented. It is something that has to be shown in detail by examining various attempts to produce philosophical theories of justification. (PR 98)
But, in fact, most of the balance of Fogelin's book is devoted to arguing, by examining and finding wanting a representative collection of such epistemic theories, in support of the sceptical thesis that no justificatory framework can withstand an unlin1ited raising of the level of scrutiny. And if this is so then Fogelin, at least, should consistently conclude that our everyday knowledgeclaims are all determinately false; that is, that the fact of the matter is that we do not know any of the things about the world that we are inclined to think and say we do. In developing his views Fogelin claims to be doing nothing more than "describing what we mean when we claim to know something and (following Wittgenstein) also describing the standards we use in employing such claims" (PR 98) The outcome of the first of these projects is the analysis, (KF); the outcome of the second his concession that "when people claim to know things, they do not do so in the belief that they have eliminated all eliminable refuting possibilities, nor do their auditors suppose that they believe this" (PR 95). But once a reference to Wittgenstein's views (specifically in On Certainty) is on the table, it is disturbing to find his name invoked only in connection with the second enterprise; for, from the later Wittgensteinian point of view, the two projects are surely not independent of one another. The philosopher who consistently counselled us not to assume but to look and see, and who proposed that "the meaning of a word is its use in the language" could hardly regard a description of the circumstances and manner in which people 165
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actually make knowledge-claims as irrelevant to the question of what we mean when we claim to know something. On what evidence, then, does Fogelin base his conclusion that, in the case of'S knows that p', our meaning and our customary usage diverge in the way he describes? On what considerations does his account of the meaning of'S knows that p' rest? The answer seems to be: the classical JTB account of knowledge plus the existence of Gettier and other problems and the failure of typical philosophical strategies for coping with them. The first of these, of course, has historically been supported precisely by appeals to facts about the way we use epistemic terms; for example, that we would typically balk at saying both that S knows that p and that p is false; that we characteristically distinguish between someone's having known and his (merely) having guessed correctly; and so on. Customary usage, in other words, will arguably take us as far as "justified true belief", but Fogelin's thesis that 'justified' here is ambiguous between a "performance" and a "grounds" interpretation needs to be independently supported, as does his crucial contention that being justified in both senses is required for knowledge. As far as I can tell, however, all that Fogelin has on offer at this point is his diagnosis of Gettier cases. Now, it is certainly true that the hypothetical subject, S, of a Gettier-case thought-experiment is supposed to have in some sense responsibly arrived at a true belief, that p, on grounds that are not sufficient to in FogelinJs sense establish its truth, and so, if (KF) specified necessary and sufficient conditions for knowledge, the desired intuitive conclusion that S does not know that p would obviously follow. But, as we have seen, once we recogllize the difference between S's posited informational state and our own, the perspectivality of epistemic attributions, including attributions of performance-justification (epistemically responsible conduct), is quite sufficient to account for the philosophical data. Although S will have done everything that, given his informational state, he legitimately concludes is sufficient to entitle hinl to confidently judge that p, he will not have done everything that, given our richer informational state, we legitimately conclude is required to be so entitled, and we can consequently again draw the desired intuitive conclusion that S does not know that p. Furthermore, it is now clear that, on Fogelin's view, someone's grounds will be sufficient to establish the truth of sonle belief whenever they entail the truth of that belief. For, the truth of a belief will evidently not have been established, in Fogelin's sense, unless every possible defeator has been eliminated. "It seen1S entirely natural", he writes, "to ask [presumably rhetorically] how grounds can establish the truth of something when at the same time 166
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there are undercutting possibilities that have not been eliminated" (PR 94). Fogelin's account of the meaning of'S knows that p' is thus more stringent, and more traditionally "Cartesian", than the prima facie "infallibilist" analysis offered by David Lewis: Subject S knows propositionp iff p holds in every possibility left uneliminated by S's evidence; equivalently, iff S's evidence eliminates every possibility in which non-po ("EK" 551)
For, wanting to hold that many of our everyday knowledge-claims are true, Lewis interprets the phrase 'every possibility' as an implicitly restricted quantifier, roughly "every possibility except those that we may properly ignore", and insists that most of our ordinary ascriptions of knowledge are made properly ignoring the indefinitely many evidentially uneliminated possible defeators that we infact ignore. When we are not engaged in epistemological reflection, he writes, "we can still do a lot of proper ignoring, a lot of knowing, and a lot of true ascribing of knowledge to ourselves and others" ("EK" 559). On Fogelin's account, in contrast, the truth of a belief will evidently be established only if it is established in the "special" context of the "intense view of things" within which a mere consideration of defeating possibilities supposedly indefinitely heightens the level of scrutiny. But even if we ultimately find sufficient reason to concede, as we have not yet done, that there is a unique" detached" context of enquiry within which consideration of mere possibilities can properly undermine the knowledge-claims we are· otherwise prepared to advance, it is not clear why we should regard that epistemic perspective as the correct one from which to evaluate the propriety of everyday knowledge-claims even understood as Fogelin understands them. For, the epistemic notion of grounds "establishing (or being adequate to establish) the truth of p" itself arguably has a perspectival sense. Consider again the case in which S, using a justificatory procedure that Fogelin himself endorses, has based his belief that p on grounds that Fogelin himself accepts. Despite Fogelin's disclaimer, I have argued, if the context of enquiry is one in which the leading question is whether p, then, from Fogelin's de facto epistemic perspective, S will justifiably have arrived at his belief that p, for S will have done everything that, judged from that perspective, he ought to have done in order to be entitled to be fully confident in his opinion that p. "There is nothing special about my justificatory framework," Fogelin writes, but if the justificatory framework whose conditions S ex hypothesi satisfies really is Fogelin's own, then when what is at issue is whether S has done what one needs to do in order to be entitled confidently to believe 167
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that p, it should surely be from the perspective of that framework that Fogelin makes his epistemic appraisals. But now we can add that, from that perspective, Fogelin should also judge that S has done everything that needed to be done in order to establish the truth of p. For, where the operative question is whether p, i.e. whether or not it is true that p, then responsibly arriving at an affirmative answer to that question is, in one clear sense, establishing the truth of p. Indeed, from anyone epistemic perspective, the judgements that S has done everything he ought to have done in order to be entitled confidently to believe that p and that S has done everything that needs to be done in order to establish the truth of p stand or fall together. For, if something more than what S has in fact done still needs to be done in order to establish the truth of p, then S is surely not entitled, on the basis of what he has in fact done, to be fully confident that p; that is, to be fully confident that p is true. Like our everyday knowledge-ascriptions, in other words, our matter-of-factual truth-claims are always made from some determinate "situated" epistemic perspective. Robert Brandom argues, indeed, that the distinction of "scorekeeping perspectives" exhausts the notion of "objective truth": Objectivity is a structural aspect of the social-perspectivaljOrm of conceptual contents ... [Every] scorekeeping perspective maintains a distinction in practice between normative status [entitlements] and (immediate) normative attitude [commitments]between what is objectively correct and what is merely taken to be correct ... Yet what from the point of view of a scorekeeper is objectively correct-what from that perspective another interlocutor is actually committed to by a certain acknowledgment-can be understood by us, who are interpreting the scorekeeping activity, entirely in terms of the immediate attitudes . . . of the scorekeeper. What appears to [him] as the distinction between what is objectively correct and what is merely taken to be or treated as correct appears to us as the distinction between what is acknowledged by the scorekeeper attributing a commitment and what is acknowledged by [the target of that ascription]. The difference between objective normative status and subjective nornlative attitude is construed as a social-perspectival distinction between normative attitudes. (MIE 597)
On this account, our own claims to the effect that this or that proposition is true are simply expressions of our own "situated" normative (episten1ic) attitudes. If this is right, then not only can there be no "special", "detached" standpoint from which we, or anyone, can legitimately arrive at epistemically privileged truth-claims or knowledge-ascriptions, but we will also judge that some epistemic agent S's grounds for confidently believing that p are sufficient toestablish the truth of p, when and only whel1 we ourselves are prepared to 168
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confidently judge, on those same grounds, that p. The distinction between Fogelin's "grounds" and "performance" clauses will just be the distinction betweenjudgements made from the epistemic perspectives constituted by S's and our own contexts of enquiry and informational states. Certain elements of Fogelin's views clearly harmonize with this "structural" conception of objectivity. Discussing the "grounds" sense of justification, he writes: In this sense of 'justified,' justification claims, as opposed to claims concerning whetper someone has reasoned justifiably, conlmit us to the truth of what is said to be justified. Furthermore, with some free play, we commit ourselves to this belief on the same grounds that comnlit [S] to it. (PR 19-20)
But, although a knowledge-ascription, e.g. that S lmows that p, made in the ordinary, non-philosophical course of things, in some sense concedes that S's grounds establish the truth of p, when the chips are down Fogelin remains a hardliner about "establishing truth". A justificatory procedure will be adequate to establish truth, in his sense, only if it can withstand an unlimited raising of the level of scrutiny. As long as any possible eliminable defeators remain uneliminated, truth has not been established. By now it should be clear that, despite Fogelin's occasiollal disclaimers, we are here travelling through essentially Cartesian territory. Matter-of-factual truth is, so to speak, epistemically transcendent. Having knowledge requires that one's grounds establish truth, and truth is not established as long as error remains possible. Fogelin frequently suggests that a Pyrrhonist sceptic who eschews classical sceptical scenarios ill favour of "examples involving papiermache" is more modest and less demanding than his Cartesian counterpart, but if this is not Descartes' notion of certainty or indubitability, it is near enough to it to make no difference. The alternatives that we have been exploring suggest that there is no necessity about any of this. We have so far found no reason to concede that there is a unique "detached" context of enquiry within which consideration of merely possible defeators must indefinitely raise the relevant level of scrutiny, and so no reason to concede that matter-of-factual knowledge will be possible only if some humanly possible justificatory procedure can actually deliver the epistemic assurances of an "evidential search" unlimited in both breadth and depth. And we have seen that a consistently "perspectivalist" understanding of both knowledge-attributions and matter-of-factual truth-claims can go a long way toward accounting for the philosophical data of Gettier and other problematic cases. 169
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What we have not yet done, however, is explicitly thematize the context which Stroud, Foge1in, Lewis, and Williams all contend in some sense "destroys" knowledge; namely, the context of philosophical epistemological enquiry per se. Within this context we allegedly undertake, as Williams puts it, "an assessment of the totality of our knowledge of the world, issuing in a judgment delivered from a distinctively detached standpoint, and amounting to a verdict on Ollr claim to have knowledge of an objective world" (UD 22). Williams' own view is that the idea of such a project makes sense only in the context of "theoretical commitments that are not forced on us by our ordinary ways of thinking about knowledge, justification and truth" (UD 32). In particular, he argues, the totality condition implicitly presupposes a classically strong subjectivist foundationalism; specifically, what Stroud calls "the doctrine of the epistemic priority of sensory experiences over independently existing objects" (SPS 144): [The] traditional assessment of knowledge takes place from an uncompromisingly first-person standpoint. This retreat into subjectivity is an immediate consequence of accepting the totality condition on a properly philosophical understanding of lmowledge of the world. If all knowledge of the world is up for assessment, I cannot take for granted anything having to do with my or anyone else's worldly situation. (UD 99) If we are to "assess" all our lmowledge of the world, all at once, it must be on the basis of knowledge that we take (or have argued) to be somehow more secure. What could this be, if not experiential knowledge? (UD 51)
Most of the time Williams' official view seems to be that such an assessment makes sense-that the context of epistemological enquiry as traditionally conceived is, so to speak, well-defined-and that, within that context, the sceptical verdict is correct. His chief critical contention is then that what he calls "epistemological realism"-i.e. the subjectivist-foundationalist presupposition of the epistemic priority of experiential knowledge-is a substantial theoretical commitment that we are free to abandon, not something "forced on us by our ordinary ways of thinking about knowledge, justification, and truth" (UD 32): [The] sceptic's starting point is not ordinary epistemic practice but a theory of the systematic demands on knowledge that ordinary practice implicitly imposes. (UD 34) All [the sceptic's argument from the totality condition] shows is that the doctrine of the priority of experiential knowledge over knowledge of the world is a methodological necessity ofthe traditionalepistemologicalproject. But since the sceptic himself is irrevocably committed to distinguishing between methodological necessity and truth, it does not show, nor by his own standards can the sceptic take it to show, that the doctrine is true. (UD 127) 170
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On this view, what fundamentally needs to be addressed and defused is the prima-facie intuitive plausibility or naturalness of the sceptic's argumentation. If epistemological realism is an optional and dispensable theoretical commitment, then although there will exist a context within which it is correct to say that we have no knowledge of the world, this "knowledge-destroying" context will be one which we can, but need not, occupy. What the sceptic is basically wrong about is not the (conditional) C01Tectness of his sceptical conclusions, given his theoretical presuppositions, but rather their inevitability, given our de facto command of the concepts of knowledge, justification, and objective truth. Sometimes, however, Williams seems to suggest that it is already a mistake to concede the coherence of the sceptic's putative theoretical stance: If knowledge and justification are embedded in particular contexts, and if contextual factors include our interests, collateral knowledge and worldly situation (known or not), there will be no possibility of reflecting on "knowledge" in abstraction from everything we know, including things we know about the world. There will be no possibility of reflective understanding if, in taking the crucial step back, we deprive ourselves of anything to reflect on. (UD 194) Scepticism arises, Hume tells us, when reason acts alone. But one question never crosses Hume's mind: why suppose that when reason acts alone, when we suspend all topical inquiries, that anything remains for us to reason about? (UD 357)
On this view, the alleged "knowledge-destroying" context of epistemological enquiry, traditionally conceived, is a chimera. There is no Archimedean point from which we can intelligibly undertake a philosophical-epistemic assessment of the totality of our knowledge of the world. Rather, all enquiry will be determinately situated enquiry, conducted against a background of matter-of-factual beliefs not then and there in question. This last view clearly harmonizes well with the internalist-perspectivalist picture that has gradually been emerging from our ret1ections, but such philosophical harmony is not yet convincing argumentation, and so no substitute for explicitly asking and attempting to answer the question of what we may reasonably demand and expect of a systematic epistemological theory. That task, consequently, will shortly occupy an increasing amount of OllT attention. Before turning to it, however, I wallt to bring the internalist-perspectivalist alternative into sharper focus, and to do so I shall have recourse to some rather unconventional means. Curiously enough, what I want to do next is briefly to explore the anti-sceptical theses and arguments of G. E. Moore. Sometimes congenial convictions show up where one would least expect them.
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Certitude Susta ined: Portrait of G. E. Moore as a Perspectiva list
5
Scepticism means, not intellectual doubt alone, but moral doubt. Thomas Carlyle
Barry Stroud's sophisticated critique of G. E. Moore's anti-sceptical initiatives! is by now perhaps better known than Moore's original essays, but despite Stroud's syn1pathetic and careful, although ultimately negative, assessment of his work, I am convinced that Moore's positive contributions to the discussion of philosophical scepticism have not yet been fully appreciated. Among n1Y ain1s in this chapter is to advance that appreciation. I must add, however, straight away and up front, that while I propose to learn from Moore and to defend some of his arguments and strategies against Stroud's careful criticisms, the G. E. Moore whose advocacy I shall be undertaking is partially a creature of my own making. Despite his considerable originality, like any philosopher Moore was to a certain extent both a product of and a hostage to his times. I am similarly at least as n1uch a product of and a hostage to mine, of course, but more than a half-century of additional philosophical insight and hindsight nevertheless inevitably confers some advantages. Thus, although much of the time what I present as Moore's views will simply be a faithful reflection, or even a direct transcription, of what he literally said, sometimes what I present as Moore's views will rather represent what Moore should have said, either in the light of or instead of some of what 1 In chapter 3 of The Significance of Philosophical Scepticism (SPS), (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984). .
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he actually did say. A reader who prefers his exegesis strict, then, may choose to call the views here expounded and defended not "Moore's" but rather "Moorean", and one would be hard-pressed to fault such a decision. That said, however, I shall continue to attribute the views to Moore himself. It is at least a defensible expository convenience. The most compact way to formulate Moore's anti-sceptical strategy is this: He is convinced that modern, i.e. broadly Cartesian, philosophical scepticism cannot get started. Especially during the years following his 1925 "Defence of Common Sense", Moore's work increasingly reflects the conviction that what he calls "con1mon sense" does not in fact need any "defending". There is, so to speak, no place to stand to lallnch a sceptical philosophical attack upon it. 2 Moore's reasons for this conviction are fundamentally dialectical. Moore does not understand philosophical disputation as an encounter between two contenders on initially neutral territory, with ultimate victory going to the disputant whose arguments prove superior, but rather as analogous to an adversariallegal proceeding, in which prosecution and defence ab initio confront unequal tasks. Such proceedings are structured by a presumption of innocence, so while the prosecutioI?- must establish guilt "beyond reasonable doubt", the defence is not charged with establishing innocence at all. In the courtroom, indeed, innocence is not the sort of thing that can be "established". Innocence is, so to speak, the default condition. From the beginning, the burdel1 of prooflies with the prosecution, and it is a sufficient defence to ensure that it remains there. Similarly, Moore is convinced that the burden of argument always initially lies with the would-be philosophical sceptic and that it is sufficient "defence" to ensure that it remains there. Only a sceptical challenge whose epistemic credentials were deemed superior to the presumptive legitimacies of "common sense" could even in principle shift the onus probandi, and Moore consistently suggests that it will always in practice be possible to restore the original ("default") structure of dialectical responsibilities by successfully challenging any such supposition. Stroud repeatedly remarks on what he takes to be Moore's evident inability to understand the plltative global or "all at once" character of the sceptic's challenge: 2 To say this is not to say that Moore's" common sense" cannot legitimately be challenged at all. It may well be the case, for instance, that theoretical science commands epistemic resources by means of which central claims of "common sense" can justifiably, even globally, be called into question. The modifier 'philosophical', in other words, is crucial to understanding Moore's response to scepticism. It is philosophical scepticism that cannot get started. Having noted this here, I shall for the most part simply take this qualification for granted in what follows.
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[Sceptical] philosophers get into their plight by seeking a general account of how our knowledge of the world is possible and then finding that certain considerations about perception and knowledge seem to lead inevitably to a negative conclusion. It is the peculiar nature of that philosophical investigation that Moore seems never to have grasped ... (SPS 143) [What] Moore ignores is the possibility of a detached philosophical assessment of the assertions and knowledge-claims we make in everyday life. The conclusion of that assessment is that none of those confident assertions are strictly speaking instances of knowledge, and so none of our knowledge-claims about the world around us are strictly speaking true. There is a direct conflict between the philosophical conclusion and our claims in everyday life. (SPS 176-7)3
The G. E. Moore whose views I am presenting here, on the contrary, understands the "peculiar nature" of the sceptic's philosophical investigations quite well. It is not that he ignores "the possibility of a detached philosophical assessment of the ... knowledge-claims we make in everyday life" . He rather denies the possibility of such a "detached" assessment, and, indeed, denies it precisely on the grounds of its "peculiar nature".4 For, as I will explicitly argue on Moore's behalf, what the sceptic's ostensible "detached assessment" is detached from turn out to be just the considerations which give epistemic assessment its point in the first place. Stroud illustrates his diagnosis of Moore's relationship to philosophical scepticism by a comparison of two dialogues regarding the standing of a murder investigation. One dialogue occurs at the end of the investigation, after the master detective and young apprentice who are assigned to the case have discovered a hidden camera and viewed its videotape record clearly showing the butler in the act of committing the murder: If a newspaper reporter who knows nothing about the discovery of the camera is saying into a telephone in the foyer "It is still not known here who committed the
3 Compare: "All of my knowledge of the external world is supposed to have been brought into question at one fell swoop; no particular piece of it is to be available as unquestioned knowledge to help me decide whether or not another particular candidate is true. I am to focus on my relation to the whole body of beliefs which I take to be knowledge of the external world and to ask, fronl 'outside' as it were, not simply whether it is true but whether and how I know it even if it is in fact true. It is no longer a question about what to believe, but whether and how any of the things I admittedly do believe are things that I know or can have any reason to believe" (SPS 117-18). 4 At least he does when he has his wits fully about him. As Stroud correctly observes, "even Homer nods, and from time to time Moore is lured further towards seeing things in the philosopher's way than ... is consistent with his total immersion in the non-'phi1osophical' or everyday understanding of the remarks philosophers make" (SPS, 120).
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murder" the apprentice overhearing him can easily refute him by saying "No. I know that the butler did it". (SPS 109)
The other dialogue, in contrast, takes place between the eager assistant and his seasoned superior much earlier, while their investigation is still in progress: The apprentice ... tries to be thorough and systematic and decides to consider everyone who could possibly have committed the murder and to eliminate them one by one. He gets from the duke's secretary a list of all those who were in the house at the .time and with careful research shows conclusively and. . . correctly that the only one on the list who could possibly have done it is the butler. He then announces to the detective that he now knows that the butler did it. "No," the master replies, "that list was simply given to you by the secretary; it could be that someone whose name is not on the list was in the house at the time and committed the murder. We still don't know who did it." (SPS 108)
As Stroud correctly points out, in this situation the apprentice cannot rebut his superior's clain1 of ignorance by (re)asserting his claim to knowledge, "No. You're wrong because I know the butler did it." "The difference between the two cases", Stroud continues, is obviously that the detective, unlike the reporter, is denying the apprentice's knowledge by pointing out a deficiency in the way the apprentice's conclusion was reached. A certain possibility is raised which is compatible with all the apprentice's evidence for his claim and, if realized, would mean that he does not know that the butler did it. (SPS 109)
N ow, it is simply not true that the difference between the two cases Stroud describes is "obviously" what he claims it is. There are many differences between the two cases, and one that Stroud does not emphasize is surely both salient and significant. In the first situation the apprentice is stipulated to be in possession of relevant information that the reporter ex hypothesi lacks. Their informational states, and a fortiori their episten1ic contexts, are strikingly different. In the second situation, in contrast, after he has shared his latest reasoning with the detective, there is nothing relevant to the investigation known by the apprentice of which his superior remains ignorant. The most straightforward explanation of the apprentice's ability to refute the reporter by asserting a claim to knowledge, in other words, is that there is in fact something relevant, indeed something decisive, that the apprentice knows which the reporter does not know. Stroud is concerned to distinguish cases of the first sort, in which an individual's first-person claim to knowledge can successfully rebut another's 175
Certitude Sustained
assertion of general ignorance, from the sort of case in which such a first-person knowledge-claim is epistemically impotent, because he sees Moore as pursuing something like the former course in response to philosophical scepticism. That is, Stroud interprets Moore, paradigmatically in his "Proof of an External World"s, as undertaking to reply to the sceptical challenge by volunteering first-person knowledge-claims; claims intended to remind the sceptic of something that Moore believes both of them in fact already know; for instance, that two human hands (and hence two external things) exist. [Moore] thinks that what he says [e.g. "Here is one hand" and "Here is another"] conflicts with what sceptical philosophers say, and he thinks it is a "sufficient refutation" of philosophical scepticism to point as he does to some particular thing that is known. (SPS 105)
But if Moore indeed believes that both he and the sceptic already know (the truth of) what he says, then we can in1mediately cOl1clude that Stroud's first n10del, the k110wledgeable apprentice correcting the ignorant reporter, does not capture what Moore himself thinks he is up to. The apprentice does not remind the reporter of something he, in some sense, already knew; he informs the reporter of something he did not know; namely, that the case has been solved. The question now becomes: Does Stroud's second model, the enthusiastic apprentice and his cautious superior, more accurately represent the relationship between Moore and his sceptical opponents? The time has come to make some further distinctions. For, whether Moore thinks that what he says conflicts with what sceptical philosophers say depends upon which sceptical philosophers one has in mind. As we have already observed, scepticisn1 is said in many ways. When Moore says, for il1stance, "Here is one hand" and "Here is another", then what he says prima facie does conflict with something that a so-called ontological sceptic is inclined to say, namely, that there exist no "external things" or, in Moore's preferred Kantian formulation, no "things to be met with in space". Such ontological scepticism, however, is at issue l1either in Moore's essay nor in Stroud's. What is at issue for Stroud is knowledge. His paradigmatic, socalled "epistemological", sceptic concludes not that there exist no external things, but rather that it is not known whether there exist any external things. 6 N ow, Moore is certainly convinced that what he says does express something that he knows, and, indeed, he later explicitly says so:
5 "Proof of an External World" ("PEW"), repro in G. E. Moore, Philosophical Papers (PP), (New York: Humanities Press, 1977). 6 And, indeed, not knowable whether there exist any such things.
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Certitude Sustained I certainly did at the moment know that which I expressed by the combination of certain gestures with saying the words "There is one hand and here is another". ("PEW" 146)
But it does not follow from this concession that what Moore said when he uttered the words "There is one hand and here is another" itselfconflicts with an epistemological sceptic's conclusion, and, indeed, it is clear that it does not. The truth of what Moore says in the course of his main argument-in essence, that there in fact exist two hands-is compatible with both the truth and the falsity of the claim that it is not known whether there are any external things. 7 What is not compatible with this sceptical conclusion is Moore's subsequent retrospective self-ascription of knowledge, and consequently, so to speak his methodological "meta-claim", to which we shall return, that what he has produced in fact constitutes a "rigorous proof" of the proposition that there exist at least two external things. These last remarks remind us that Moore's essay is, in the first instance, addressed neither to the question of the existence of external things 110r to the question of our knowledge of the existence of external things, but rather quite specifically to the prima facie different question of whether the existence of "things outside us" can be proved. In particular, Moore's point of departure is Kant's remark that it still remains a scandal to philosophy and to human reason in general that the existence of things outside us . . . must be accepted merely on faith, and that if anyone thinks good to doubt their existence, we are unable to counter his doubts by any satisfactory proof (Critique of Pure Reason, Exl n.)
For Stroud, this appears to be a difference which makes no difference. As he ptltS it, "if Moore really does prove that there are external things, doesn't that settle the question of whether we know that such things exist?" (SPS 85). But while it is true that if we concede that Moore "really does prove" that there are external things we cannot consistently go on to doubt or deny that we know that there are, it is not at all obvious that Moore himself intends to demonstrate that we know this. That Moore's aim is to prove the existence of external things is compatible with our knowledge of their existence being a presupposition rather than a consequence of his reasoning. An epistemological sceptic's denial of such knowledge will be inconsistent with the judgement 7 Although Moore would be prepared to add that "by asserting [what I did] in the way I did, I implied, though I did not say, that they were in fact certain-implied, that is, that I n1yself knew for certain, in each case, that what I asserted to be the case was ... in fact the case" (from "Certainty" ("C"), in PP, p. 227).
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Certitude Sustained
that Moore has successfully proved the existence of external things in either case. Only a further general commitment to somethillg like the formalist (mathematical) paradigm in epistemology would straightforwardly warrant the conclusion that the existence of any empirical knowledge presupposes the possibility of such a proof. Stroud, in any case, ul1derstands the sceptic's challenge on the model of the master detective's response to his assistant in the second dialogue. He takes the goal of the sceptic's reasoning to be to point out, by calling attention to a possibility, a general deficiency in the way that anyone, including Moore, has arrived at the convictions reflected in any (matter-of-factual) knowledge claims. Since this is so, Stroud concludes, first-person professions to know (e.g. that two human hands exist) on Moore's part are no more effective in opposing the sceptic's general denial of knowledge than the apprentice's (re)assertion of his claim to know that the butler did it would be in contestillg his superior's denial that the identity of the nlurder is known: When we see [Moore's] arguments as ineffective against scepticism ... it is because we see them as parallel to the apprentice's [impotent] response to the detective's verdict that it is still not known who committed the murder ... [The] philosophical sceptic's denial of our knowledge [is] the outcome of an investigation into the basis of all the knowledge or certainty we think we have about the world around us. That is why I think we feel it is not a "sufficient refutation" of that scepticism simply to bring forward "a particular case ... in which we do know of the existence of some material object". The philosopher's assessment of all of our knowledge of the world around us is meant to apply to every particular case in which we do think we know of some material object, so no case that could be brought forward would escape that scrutiny. (SPS 110)
But just as Moore's strategy failed to fit Stroud's first model, the knowledgeable apprentice detective and the ignorant reporter, what should rather strike us here is how different Moore's engagement with his sceptical opponent is from the model offered by the secolld dialogue, between the senior detective and his young apprentice. That dialogue takes place within the context of an ongoing enquiry in which what is not (yet) known-e.g. whether the list supplied by the duke's secretary is complete-contrasts with what is (already) blown-e.g. that, as the master detective ex hypothesi concedes, the only one on the list who could possibly have done it is the butler. The apprentice's investigative work may not yet be finished, but his superior advances no grounds to conclude that it is in principle impossible to finish. The senior detective has indicated a possibility compatible with what he and his apprentice both know (namely that someone not named on the list was in the house at the time of the murder) which must be ruled Ollt in order for the apprentice's 178
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eliminative reasoning to warrant his claim to know that the butler did it. But, as Stroud himself concedes, while the apprentice cannot effectively respond to this challenge simply by reasserting his knowledge-claim, "there is nothing in the [senior] detective's objection which by itself implies that it cannot be met" (SPS 122). On the face of it, that no one was in a position to commit the murder whose name does not appear on the secretary's list is something that the apprentice can come to know by mobilizing the same sorts of investigative strategies and techniques by which ex hypothesi he has already come to know that, among those whose names do appear on the list, only the butler could have done it. There is, of course, no a priori guarantee that the two detectives will ultimately succeed in establishing the identity of the murderer, but also no a priori reason to suppose that they must fail, and, if they do fail, the explanation of their failure will lie in particular features of the particular case. One would certainly not be justified in concluding on that account that their investigative methods are in principle inadequate ever to discover the identity of any guilty party. The sceptic's claim, in contrast, is precisely that nothing is, or can be, known (about the external world). It is not just that Moore does not know what he in fact claims to know; for example, that there exist at least two human hands. No one knows anything like what Moore claims to know. Like the detective, ~he sceptic purports to call Moore's (and our) attention to a possibility which (the sceptic claims) must be ruled out in order for Moore (or anyone) to be warranted in claiming to know that there exist human hands. In due course, we shall engage the central question of whether he succeeds in doing so. Unlike the detective, however, the sceptic suggests that the possibility in question never can be ruled out. It is not that Moore, like the young apprentice, has failed to pursue his enquiries far enough. The sceptic does not fault the scope of Moore's enquiries. His claim is rather that the investigative strategies and techniques available to Moore (or anyone), so to speak are inadequate ever to yield a warranted conclusion regarding "things to be met with in space". Stroud's description makes it clear that what the apprentice claims to know, that the butler did it, is essentially a conclusion. Both detectives begin in ignorance and must reason their way to knowledge of the murderer's identity from_ the evidence available to them; that is, from premises recording what they do know or come to know in the course of (and as a result of) their investigation. The reason that the apprentice must rule out the possibility indicated by his superior before his eliminative reasoning can warrant his knowledgeclaim is that the completeness of the secretary's list is a (tacit) premise of that reasoning. That is, the apprentice has plainly reasoned: 179
Certitude Sustained
No one whose name appears on the list other than the butler could have n1urdered the duke. So, no one other than the butler could have murdered the duke.
and it is clear that the reasoning is invalid as it stands; that is, without the addition of a premise to the effect that no one whose name does not appear on the list could have committed the crime. But, if this is correct, then neither of Stroud's dialogues provides an appropriate model for understanding and evaluating the form of Moore's response to his sceptical challenger. As I am interpreting him, if Moore intends his "Proof of an External World" to remind us of anything, it is that when it comes to the existence of external things we do not begin in ignorance. We do not need to reason our way to knowledge, for example, that there are human hands. In his proof, that is, "Here is one hal1d, and here is another" is not a conclusion, but a premise: [The sceptics] want a proof of what I assert now when I hold up my hands and say "Here's one hand and here's another"; and ... they want a proof of what I assert now when I say "I did hold up two hands above this desk just now". Of course, what they really want is ... son1ething like a general statement as to how any propositions of this sort may be proved. This, of course, I haven't given; and I do not believe it can be given: If this is what is meant by proof of the existence of external things, I do not believe that any proof of the existence of external things is possible. ("PEW" 149)
One way to interpret Moore's claim here that no such "proof of the existence of external things" is possible is as a remark about the onus probandi, analogous to the claim that no proof of a defendant's innocence is possible in criminal courtroom proceedings. But, surely, it will be objected, there is nevertheless a sense in which a defendant's innocence can come to be proved, as it were per accidens, in the course of such a trial. Although the attorney for the defence is not charged with doing so, she may surely adduce considerations tllat do successfully establish the innocence of her client which, after all, the prosecution has (legitimately) called into question. Apparently Moore also does not believe that it is possible to give even such a proof peraccidens of what he asserts when, gesturing appropriately, he says "Here is one hand, and here is another". On the face of it, however, the considerations he offers at this point concede too much to the sceptic: How am I to prove now that "Here's one hand, and here's another"? I do not believe I can do it. In order to do it, I should need to prove for one thing, as Descartes pointed out, that I am not now dreaming. But how can I prove that I am not? I have, no doubt, conclusive reasons for asserting that I am not now dreaming; I have conclusive evidence that I am awake: but that is a very different thing from being able to 180
Certitude Susta ined prove it. I could not tell you what all my evidence is; and I should require to do this at least, in order to give you a proof. ("PEW" 149)
Moore's professed strategy at this point is interestingly similar to that invoked in so-called transcendental arguments; in particular, as they have been interpreted by P. F. Strawson. The sceptical conclusion that Strawson confronts in Individuals challenges the epistemic legitimacy of two very general cognitive practices: the diachronic re-identification of spatio-temporal particulars and the ascription of mental states, both sensations and thoughts, to persons. Strawson responds to such scepticism with an argument from the standpoint of what he calls"descriptive metaphysics" for the conclusion that there must exist "logically adequate criteria" for both practices: We do in fact possess a conceptual scheme containing (categorial) concepts both of enduring particular objects following continuous trajectories through space and time and of persons as the single logical subjects of both physical and mental states and characteristics. We could not possess such a conceptual scheme unless we could warrantedly engage in the corresponding cognitive practices, diachronic re-identification and the ascription of "P-predicates". Hence there must exist "criteria" which are "logically adequate" to warrant our doing so. The argument is, as it were, a "non-constructive existence proof" , and, in fact, no concrete exan1ples of "logically adequate criteria" are later (or ever) forthcoming, but Strawson can nevertheless correctly insist that the conclusion that such criteria exist is not impugned by his inability to provide specific examples. The obvious way to interpret Moore here is as argu-ing analogously from what we might call "descriptive epistemology": He does infact know that he is not then and there dreaming. He could not know this unless he was in possession of "conclusive reasons" or "conclusive evidence" for believing that he is awake. Hence there must exist such reasons or evidence. Moore, of course, concedes that he cannot determinately and exhaustively enumerate or display such reasons or evidence, but, like Strawsol1, he can correctlyinsist that the conclusion that such reasons or evidence exist is not impugned by his inability to do so. Unlike Strawson's point of departure, Moore's major premise here at least appears to beg the question against the sceptic. We can, however, in1agine a closer Moorean parallel to Strawson's argument, departing not from such a specific situated knowledge-claim but from the observation that we do possess a conceptual scheme containing concepts of both veridical and non-veridical perceptual experiences (and so of a distinction between them), and proceeding 181
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to the conclusion that there must exist "conclusive" reasons or evidence for perceptual claims; that is, reasons or evidence "logically adequate" to establish the truth of at least some such claims, by way of an intermediate len1ma to the effect that we could not possess such a conceptual scheme unless we could sometimes warrantedly judge of some actual perceptual experience that it was (or was not) veridical. It is by no means clear, of course, that such an argument would have any hope of succeeding. In any event, the picture of G. E. Moore as implicitly engaging in Strawsonian transcendental argumentation is surely sufficiently implausible to motivate us to search for an exegetical alternative at this point. Must Moore concede that he cannot prove the crucial premise of his ostensible proof of the existence of at least two things to be met with in space? Earlier in "Proof of an External World" , Moore enumerated three necessary conditions for a "rigorous proof". On that account, a proposition is proved only if it can be exhibited as the conclusion of a valid, non-circular (non-question-begging) argument whose premises are known: "not merely something ... believed but ... by no means certain" ("PEW" 146). According to his own criteria, then, what Moore would need to do in order to provide a rigorous proof of the proposition that he asserts when he says "Here is one hand, and here is another" is to exhibit that proposition as the conclusion of a valid non-circular argument whose premises he knows to be true. Now, although his gesture in Descartes' direction hardly gives us a sufficient reason for supposing so, it might be the case that any such argument would need to include among its pren1ises the proposition that Moore would express by saying "I am not now dreaming". And, given his criteria of "rigorous proof", that proposition, in turn, would then have to be one that he knows to be true. But surely that is a condition that Moore believes he can and does satisfy. Whatever else they n1ight suggest, Moore's claims here regarding "conclusive reasons" and "conclusive evidence" clearly imply that he is convinced that 'I am not now dreaming' expresses a proposition whose truth he does know. But if this is so then it is not at .all obvious that Moore cannot provide a rigorous proof of what he asserts by saying, with appropriate gestures, "Here is one hand, and here is another". He explicitly denies, after all, that an inability to prove that premise of his original argument impugns that argun1ent's status as a "rigorous proof" . Even if what Moore would express by saying "I am not now dreaming" is an indispensable premise of any candidate proof of the proposition he expresses by "Here is one hand, and here is another", then, his inability to prove that he is not (then and there) dreaming woul.d not by itself 182
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disqualify that candidate reasoning from being a "rigorous proof". It would suffice that Moore infact knows that he is not then and there dreaming, and that is something which, as we have seen, he is prepared confidently to assert. Why, then, does Moore say that he would need to prove that he is not dreaming? It may well be the case, of course, that Moore has simply temporarily lost sight of his own (plausible) criteria for rigorous proofs, in which case our most reasonable alternative at this point will be as it were to remind him of his own views, and thereby to set the overall anti-sceptical dialectic back on its proper course. Having in effect just done so, however, I want further to suggest that we can also usefully understand Moore here as implicitly challenging a fundamental tacit presupposition of his opponents; namely, that a "rigorous proof" must proceed from premises that not only are known to be true but also are somehow intrinsically epistemically more secure than the intended conclusion. On this reading, Moore's reason for concluding that what he asserts when (gesturing appropriately) he says "Here is one hand, and here is another" cannot, even per accidens, be proved is his conviction that no proposition is, or even can be, intrinsically epistemically more secure. In any event, this is, I think, the proper way to understand the point of such Moorean remarks as his comment on the four "assumptions" that he identifies as at work in various of Russell's arguments for sceptical conclusions: Russell's view that I do not know for certain that this is a pencil or that you are conscious rests . . . on no less than four distinct assumptions . . . And what I can't help asking myself is this: Is it, in fact, as certain that all these four assun1ptions are true, as that I do know that this is a pencil and that you are conscious? I cannot help answering: It seems to me more certain that I do kno,v that this is a pencil and that you are conscious, than that any single one of these four assumptions is true, let alone all four ... I do not think it is rational to be as certain of anyone of these four propositions, as of the proposition that I do know that this is a pencil. 8
Stroud, in contrast, proposes to interpret these remarks, too, on the model of the over-eager apprentice detective: From the 'assumptions' said to be behind Russell's sceptical conclusion it does indeed follow that Moore does not know that this is a pencil. But if those'assumptions' are nothing more than truths unavoidably involved in any general assessment of our knowledge of the world, Moore does not successfully refute them any more than the apprentice refutes the detective. The detective ... might be said to be 'assuming' (1) that it is possible that someone ... not on the list committed the murder, (2) that that possibility has not yet been ruled out, and (3) that that possibility must be ruled out if the apprentice is to know 8
"Four Forms of Scepticism" ("FFS"), inPP, p. 226.
183
Certitude Sustained by his eliminative reasoning that the butler did it. From these three'assumptions' it follows that the apprentice does not know by eliminating all the other listed subjects that the butler did it. But that does not enable the apprentice to refute those'assumptions' simply on the grounds that they have that implication. Those'assumptions' amount to an objection to the apprentice's claim to kno~ (SPS 111-12)
But what we need to attend to here are once again the explicit methodological constraints governing this interaction between the senior detective and his young assistant. The apprentice claims to know on the basis of his eliminative reasoning that the butler did it. What the detective il1 the first instance proposes to challenge is the adequacy of that determinate inferential basis; in particular, the truth of one of its (tacit) premises; the apprentice's claim to know is called into question so to speak only at one remove. This is once again the point, already stressed above, that in this context what the apprentice claims to know, that the butler did it, is a conclusion of reasoning which includes as an implicit premise the hypothesis that the secretary's list is complete. To put the point in Moorean terminology, the detective's objection is that the apprentice's reasoning does not qualify as a "rigorous proof" of its c011clusion. Although, ex hypothesi, it is a valid (and non-circular) piece of reasoning, it relies essentially on a tacit premise which the apprentice does 110t know to be true. This line of thought suggests that one fundamental aspect of Moore's response to the philosophical sceptic will be a sharp distinction between what (in a given context) is known"derivatively" or inferentially and what is known "immediately" or non-inferentially. Inferential knowledge is the result of a successful transmission of episten1ic authority from one or more premises to a conclusion, and it is prima facie reasonable to suppose that the epistemic authority of the conclusion which is thereby inferentially known cannot exceed that of the least authoritative premise from which it is derived. But if this is correct then it is also reasonable to suppose that a specific course of reasoning will issue in inferential knowledge only if it satisfies the conditions of a Moorean "rigorous proof"; in particular, only if it proceeds from premises which are themselves known. It is obvious, however, that not all empirical, matter-of-factual knowledge can be inferential knowledge. 9 This is not to deny that what functions as a premise in one epistemic context may be something one has come to know inferentially, as a conclusion, in anotl1er. But it is to insist that not all epistemic 9 Recall that I have argued that this claim is compatible with the internalist thesis that alljustification is inferential.
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authority can be derivative authority. On this picture, it is crucial to the sceptic's case that there be an important sense in which the epistemic authority of what Moore asserts when (gesturing appropriately) he says "Here is one hand, and here is another" be then and there ab initio derivative. That, however, is part of what Moore denies. One thing that is especially significant about the contextual distinction between inferential and non-inferential knowledge is the way it interacts with the notion of possibility. The philosophical sceptic purports to have identified a possibility, "the dream-possibility", which must be ruled out as a necessary condition of any empirical knowledge. The time has surely come to enquire more closely into what sort of 'possibility' is at issue here. Moore's own map of the modal terrain, in fact, is marked by subtleties and complexities which escape standard formal or quasi-formal treatnlents of modal discourse. In a context stipulated to be one in which he both is fully clothed and knows that he is fully clothed, for instance, Moore distinguishes between
and
(1)
I might have been naked.
(2)
I may be naked.
and, correlatively, between
and
(3)
It is possibleforme not to be fully clothed.
(4)
It is possible that I am not fully clothed.
Whereas (1) and (3), uttered by Moore, would express, roughly, only the contingency of the (ex hypothesi false) judgement that he is naked, the sense of (2) and (4), he suggests, is epistemic and roughly equivalent to
and
(2*)
I may for all I know be naked.
(4*)
It is possible for all I know that I am not fully clothed.
W'hile we can imagine situations in which (2) and (4), interpreted as (2*) and (4*), could, in fact, be asserted by someone as truths, Moore insists that such assertions would be in order only in highly unusual and atypical circumstances: Suppose, for instance, there were a blind man, suffering in addition from general anaesthesia, who knew, because he had been told, that his doctors from time to time stripped him naked and then put his clothes on again, although he himself could neither see nor feel the difference ("e" 228)
Someone's assertive use of (2) or (4) in ordinary circumstances is peculiar or paradoxical inter alia just because it implies the sort of radical impairment of 185
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that person's normal epistemic powers and capacities true of such an anaesthetized blind man in the manifest absence of any such radical in1pairment. The difference between the subjunctive 'might have been' and the indicative 'may' in (1) and (2), or between alternative nominalizations of the sentence 'I am not fully clothed'-as 'forme not to be fully clothed' and 'that I am not fully clothed'-in (3) and (4), are simply not reflected in standard modal calculi. Indeed, they are lost by even so innocuous-seeming a move as replacing a sentence "within the scope of n10dal operator" by an unstructured sentential or propositional variable. In any event, Moore's discussion here points us toward two distinct species of possibility; that is, two distinguishable senses of the term 'possible' . On the one hand, there is contingency. A proposition is contingent, Moore reminds us, if neither it nor its logical contradictory is self-contradictory. 10 And he goes on, quite correctly, to point out that the mere fact that a proposition is contingent does not by itselfimply that it is not known to be true, either in general or by some particular person. Indeed, "even if it is a fact that no contingent proposition is ever known to be true, yet in no case does this follow from the mere fact that it is contingent,,11 ("C" 231). On the other, Moore here adverts to what is appropriately called "epistemie" possibility. Epistemic possibility is a species of compossibility. A proposition expresses an epistemic possibility only if its truth is consistent with what is known to be true-and here it immediately springs to mind that whether a given proposition expresses an episten1ic possibility will depend crucially upon whose knowledge is at issue. In contrast to the purely logical (and so a-contextual) notion of contingency, that is, judgements of epistemic possibility are both context-relative and person-relative. What a person does not know on one occasion she may come to know on another, and various people's knowledge can differ dramatically in a single setting. What a given person can correctly judge to be epistemically possible will vary in accordance with such differences. Epistemic possibility, in short, is a perspectival notion, In the context of their shared enquiry, the proposition to which the master 10 In contemporary parlance, if it is true in some possible worlds and false in others. It remains a mystery to me, however, why this idiom should be thought to be philosophically more enlightening than traditional elucidations of modal notions in terms of, for instance, consistency and inconsistency (contradictoriness). 11 Sceptics in the Cartesian tradition, of course, are typically not committed to the absurdly strong thesis that no logically contingent proposition is ever known to be true. The propositions characteristically included in their own privileged class of known certainties-e.g. first-person claims regarding "the contents of immediate experience" and Descartes' own "I think" and "I exist"-are one and all contingent.
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detective appeals in the course of criticizing his over-eager assistant, that someone whose nan1e does not appear on the secretary's list committed the murder, is intended to express such an epistemic possibility. Its truth is consistent with what the detective agrees has come to be known as a result of the apprentice's diligent investigations; namely, that among the people whose names do appear on the list, only the butler could have committed the crime. To be sure, the truth of the proposition cited by the detective is not consistent with what the assistant claimed to know and so, presumably, believed that he knew, i. e. that the butler did it, but we have already conceded that the assistant cannot effectively dispute his superior's critique by reasserting his original knowledge-claim. On Stroud's model, the n1aster detective and the philosophical sceptic each cite a contingent proposition which is inconsistent with the proposition the truth of which his dialectical 0ppol1ent professes to lmow The apprentice straight away concedes that his superior has thereby successfully adduced a possibility which must be ruled out before he can legitin1ately reassert his claim to know. That is, he evidently grants the epistemicpossibility of the crime's having been committed by someone whose name does not appear on the list and so, consistently, abandons his prior conviction that his eliminative reasoning suffices to establish that the butler did it. At least by implication, Moore, in contrast, does not concede that the sceptic has successfully adduced a possibility which must be ruled out before he (Moore) can legitimately reassert his claim to know, for example, that he is standing up. He evidently reasons instead from the premise that he lmows that he is standing to the conclusion that the sceptic's proposition, although expressing a possibility in the sense of being contingent, does not express an epistemic possibility. Is there any principled way in which this dialectical asymmetry might be argued to be legitimate? Let us begin by thinking of the detective and assistant here, in perspectivalist fashion, as forming a small community of enquiry. At any given time such a community will have some open questions so to speak "on its agenda". That is, there will be propositions whose truth or falsehood is an object of more-or-Iess active and ongoing enquiry. At the outset of the murder investigation, in particular, the identity of the murderer and, afortiori, the guilt or innocence of the butler are such open questions for both investigators. Mobilizing their repertoire of investigative techniques, the detective and his apprentice undertake to gather evidence sufficient to answer that question; that is, to determine who committed the crime. Correlatively, at any given time there will be propositions whose status for a community of enquiry at that time is, at least provisionally, effectively settled187
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either as expressing truths that are available for use as premises and data or as expressing falsehoods whose contradictories can be so used. Our two detectives, in particular, initially agree on the truth or falsehood of a vast number of propositions which collectively constitute the informational setting within which their enquiries begin. The members11ip of these two groups, of open questions and of settled propositions, can and will vary significantly across time, but, as long as enquiry remains possible neither will ever become empty. If, at any time, nothing is settled, enquiry cannot continue, and if nothing is left on the agenda enquiry (trivially) cannot begin. Such a comn1unity will also share commitn1ents to what I have elsewhere 12 called an epistemics-a family of relevant and acceptable procedures of enquiry; that is, procedures for transforming propositions from open questions into propositions with settled status. And since propositions can change status in this way-and propositions that are settled at one time can in turn become open questions at another-it will be useful for such a community to have a means of keeping the books. It will be useful, that is, for the community to have available a way of indicating, from its collective epistemic perspective, the status of individual propositions relative to the ongoil1g enquiry in the light of the pertinent epistemics. The G. E. Moore that I am here representing holds that the central and fundamental use of modal and epistemic terms is to serve as status indicators within such a bookkeeping vocabulary. 13 On this interpretation, the assertion of an epistemic possibility just is an assertion to the effect that a specific question is, in the context of enquiry, still open; and a claim that the truth or falsehood of a given proposition is known just is a claim that, from the operative episten1ic perspective, its status is satisfactorily settled; that is, that what the relevant epistemics requires us to do in order to be entitled to a fully confident belief (affirmation or denial) has in fact been done. Correlatively, someone who makes such a "bookkeeping" claim or assertion thereby undertakes a correlative epistemic responsibility, roughly, to show, if suitably challenged, that the cited proposition does in fact have the claimed normative status in relation to what is demanded by the epistemics "in play". From this perspective, then, the apprentice's original claim to know expresses a commitment to be able to satisfy the demands of the epistemics of
In Beyond Formalism. Essentially this contention is defended in great and sophisticated detail in Robert Brandom's Making It Explicit. 12
13
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enquiry that he shares with his superior. In this instance, it amounts to a claim to have accumulated evidence sufficient to close the open question regarding the identity of the murderer; presumably, since it is a criminal investigation that is here under way, evidence sufficient to establish the identity of the murder "beyond reasonable doubt"; that is, in a manner adequate to stand up in a court of law. It is this sufficiency claim that the detective's critical response initially calls into question. The evidence specifically adduced by the apprentice, he points out, is only conditionally sufficient to close the question, and the truth of the proposition expressing that condition, he suggests, is itself still an open question. He concludes, therefore, that the relevant demands imposed by the shared epistemics have not yet been met. The immediate effect of his (epistemic) possibility-claim is thus to place tIle question regarding the completeness of the secretary's list on the active agenda of the ongoing enquiry. As Stroud himself notes, the apprentice can satisfactorily respond to this challenge by demonstrating that the question which his superior has suggested remains open also in fact is or can be or should be regarded as being closed: [The] detective might have been wrong-and in any case he could eventually be given an answer. When he pointed out that the apprentice does not know that the list is complete, the apprentice might have been in a position to answer "No. I checked it. I also examined all the doors and windows, none of the guests reports seeing anyone else, the trustworthy doorman admitted only those on the list, the social secretary was a reliable, devoted servant of the duke ... ", and so on. He might have very good reasons for believing that the list is complete. He would thereby meet the detective's challenge and fulfil the condition for knowing by his eliminative reasoning that the butler did it. (SPS 122)
But we can also imagine this sort of give and take between the detective and his assistant going on for quite some time. 14 If the apprentice responds to his superior's challenge in themallnerjustsketched.thedetectivemight.as Stroud suggests, concede that the identity of the murderer is now knownbut then again he might not. He might instead propose to challenge oneor more of the new claims advanced by the apprentice, e.g. that the doorman admitted only those on the list or that the secretary was a reliable and devoted servant, or one of the tacit premises of the young assistant's current reasoning, e.g. that anyone in the house at the time of the murder must have entered through one of the doors or windows whose security he has checked 14 Indeed, even after both of them have viewed the supposedly definitively incriminating videotape of the butler performing the dastardly deed. Videotapes can be tampered with, after all. As we have seen, the level of scrutiny can be driven to unreasonable, humanly impossible heights.
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and confirmed. Old mansions are notoriously honeycombed with secret passages, aren't they? There is no way to specify a priori and in advance how long such a dialogue of challenge and response might continue, but I think that Moore does suggest a way in which we can specify, a priori and in advance, when and how such a dialogue properly comes to an end. Roughly, it properly comes to an end when the apprentice can correctly say to his superior essentially what Moore says to the sceptic: that it is more reasonable to accept the proposition that the butler did it than it is to pursue the further enquiries suggested by the detective's latest challenges; that is, that, from the perspective of their shared epistemics, the questions which the detective is now posing are already effectively closed. But what sort of "reasonableness" is at issue here? One point of Moore's "Defence of Common Sense" is to emphasize that the initial epistemic context of any actual matter-of-factual enqu.iry is always extraordinarily rich. What one might call the "local" epistemic context, specifically determined by the open question(s) under investigation, particular background information, and a family of methodological commitments, is always embedded in a "global" context determined, inter alia, by the activity of enquiry persee In the case of the two detectives, their initial "local" epistemic context includes the propositions that the young duke has been stabbed, that a party was in progress at the time, that many guests saw the butler answer the telephone in the foyer, and so on. Their initial"global" epistemic context, in contrast, includes innumerable settled propositions which, to begin with, have nothing in particular to do with the circumstances of the duke's death. Among these are doubtless most of the "common-sense beliefs" enumerated with such care by Moore himself, but also cou.ntless others, e.g. that we presently lack technology for "beaming" people from place to place, which can turn out to be relevant to the ongoing investigation; for instal1ce, to the conclusion that anyone in the house at the time of th~murder must have entered through one of the doors or windows. Stroud hin1self in fact illustrates the operation of such contextual knowledge in connection with the eager assistant's hasty cOl1clusion that the duke was stabbed by someone who dashed into and out of the room during the brief interval of the butler's absence: "N0," says the master detective at the scene of the crime, "we know this table is here and is so large that no one could have come through that door and got around to this side of the table and stabbed the victim and got back out again before the butler returned" . The master detective is not misusing the word 'know' . But when he says they know the table is there and was there a few minutes ago, there is no question at issue about 190
Certitude Sustained the table's presence and no doubt about it to be removed ... He is simply reminding his colleague of something he knows and appears to have overlooked or denied in his attempted explanation of the murder. (SPS 103)
Stroud himself is concerned at this juncture to argue that Moore's "proof of an external world" takes the form of such "reminders"-an interpretation that I have already called into question. The present point is the modest one that in addition to a "local" collection of such propositiol1s regarding, for instance, the location and characteristics of a specific table at the crime scene that they have come to know in the course of their investigation, the two detectives' working epistemic context also includes a less salient "global" family of propositions that they already knew, the indefinitely many propositions which, in Wittgenstein's words,15 "we affirm without special testing"; for instance, that objects such as tables do not periodically briefly disappear and then reappear: When Moore says he knows such and such, he is really enumerating a lot of empirical propositions which we affirm without special testing; propositions, that is, which have a peculiar logical role in the system of our empirical propositions. (DC §136)
Wittgenstein's reference to a "peculiar logical role" here remil1ds us that he himself is reluctant to endorse Moore's claim to know the "common-sense" propositions that he enumerates: I should like to say: Moore does not know what he asserts he knows, but it stands fast for him, as also for nle; regarding it as absolutely solid is part of our method of doubt and enquiry. (DC §151)
It is important to be clear, then, that although Moore evidently thinks that there is something special about a proposition belonging to "common sense" , I do not propose to interpret him as endorsing either the Wittgensteinian notion that what is special about them is their "logical role" or the implicit suggestion that this role consists in our regarding them as "absolutely solid". Stroud's own interpretation of the "specialness" of a "common-sense" proposition is that it is a proposition which Moore regards as more certain than the premises of any argument which might be advanced to demonstrate its falsity, and, as we have seen, Moore is inclined to frame many of his claims in that idiom: [R] Russell's view that I do not know for certain that this is a pencil or that you are conscious rests ... on no less than four distinct assumptions ... And what I can't help 15
On Certainty (OC), ed. G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright (Oxford: Blackwell, 1969).
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asking n1yself is this: Is it, in fact, as certain that all these four assun1ptions are true, as that I do know that this is a pencil and that you are conscious? I cannot help answering: It seems to me more certain that I do know that this is a pencil and that you are conscious, than that any single one of these four assumptions is true, let alone all four ... I do not think it is rational to be as certain of anyone of these four propositions, as of the proposition that I do know that this is a pencil. ("FFS" 226)
What is not immediately obvious, however, is whether what Moore has in n1ind, to recall a fundamental distinction from our discussion of Descartes, is the personal epistemic attitude of certitude or a putative propositional epistemic feature of certainty. Stroud does not pause to ask, but the most common exegetical tendency, evidently shared by Wittgel1stein and his epigones, is to read Moore along the latter lines, as endorsing the "Cartesian" idea that his "con1mon-sense" propositions are intrinsically epistemically privileged. The citation we have just repeated, however, already lets us see that Moore's uses of the term 'certain' are too varied to admit of any single reading. Alone in this paragraph we find the contexts "I know for certain that ...", "it is as [more] certain that ... as [than] that ...", and "it is rational [for Moore] to be certain that ...". Perhaps surprisingly, what we do 110t find is the non-comparative "Cartesian" propositional context "it is certain that ...", although Moore's own catalogue in his essay "Certainty" of course includes it as well: There are four main types of expression in which the word 'certain' is commonly ', or we may say 'I am certain that ', or used. We may say 'I feel certain that ', or finally we may say 'It is certain that '. we may say 'I know for certain that ("e" 238)
Moore goes on to point out that the last two of these are veridical contexts, while the first is not: "In other words, 'I feel certain that p' does not entail that p is true ... but 'I know that p' and 'It is certain that p' do entail that p is true; they can't be true, unless it is" ("C" 238). The ren1aining expression, 'I am certain that p', he continues, is ambiguous between 'I feel certain ...' and 'I know for certain. . .'. 'I feel certain that ...', then, plainly adverts to the epistemic attitude of certitude, but what is crucial for our present exegetical purposes is what we are to make of 'It is certain that ...'. Moore begins by acknowledging one prima-facie contrast between 'It is certain that ...' and the other three expressions he has enumerated: The first three expressions are obviously ... alike in one important respect-a respect which may be expressed by saying that their meaning is relative to the person 192
Certitude Sustained who uses them. They are alike in this respect, because they all contain the word'!' ... But if we consider, by contrast, the expression 'It is certain that there are windows in that wall', it looks, at first sight, as if the meaning of this expression was not relative to the person who says it: as if it were a quite impersonal statement ("C" 239-40)
His next step is to point out that the expression 'It is certain that ... ' is epistemic, in the sense that its being true that somebody knows that p is at least a necessary condition of the truth of 'It is certain that p'. This is one significant respect in which, for instance, certainty differs from truth. A proposition can be true without anyone's knowing it to be so, but if a proposition is certain, then it is certain for someone. That is why "Noone knows whether p, but it may nevertheless be certain that p" is peculiar in a way in which "No one knows whether p, but it may nevertheless be true that p" is not. Moore goes on to argue, however, that this necessary condition is not also sufficient, "for if it were, it would follow that in any case in which somebody did know that p was true, it would always be false for anybody to say 'It is not certain thatp' " ("C" 240; my emphases), which plainly is not correct. If I assert that it is not certain that p, then, although I indeed imply that I do not know whether it is true that p, I do not thereby, even implicitly, commit myself to the truth of 'Nobody knows whether p' . It follows, Moore concludes, that in spite of appearances, the meaning of 'It is certain that p' is relative to the person who says it. And this, I think, is because ... if anybody asserts 'It is certain that p' , part of what he is asserting is that he himself knows that p is true ("C" 241)
In terms of our current expository notions, what Moore is pointing out is that clain1s of the form 'It is certain that ...' are also perspectival. The propriety of any such claim depends upon the epistemic context in which it is made, and, indeed, depends upon that context in exactly the same way that the corresponding first-person knowledge claim does. That is, someone is entitled to assert "It is certain that p" she is entitled to assert "I know that p" , and the claim "Although it is certain that p, I do not know whether or not p" is correlatively incoherent. Apart from the context 'I feel certain that ...', in fact, Moore's (non-comparative) uses of the term 'certain' are through and through epistemic and perspectival. In his philosophical idiolect, that is, 'It is certain that ...', 'I know for certain that ...', and 'I know that ...' are essentially interchangeable. They are; that is, the judgements they express are legitimately made in precisely the same epistemic contexts: 193
Certitude Sustained [If] a person can ever say with truth, with regard to any particular proposition p, 'I know that p is true', it follows that he can also truly say 'It is absolutely certain that p is true' .16 ("e" 236)
In the only sense in which Moore acknowledges a propositional epistemic feature of certainty, in short, being certain corresponds to the person-relative, and so perspectival, normative epistemic status of being known. What evidently has no place in Moore's philosophical taxonomy is the irnpersonal Cartesian notion of certainty as an intrinsic feature of determinate propositions per se, equivalent to their in principle indubitability or incorrigibility. When Moore insists that he knows with certainty that each of his "commonsense" propositions is true, then, there is no reason either to interpret him as positing a "peculiar logical role" for those "truisms" or to introduce a putatively principled distinction between what is known and what "stands fast" . The collection of "empirical propositions which we affirm without special testing" is both immense and diverse, but there is nothing in Moore's discussion to suggest that the propositions belonging to this "global" context of enquiry are intrinsically epistemically privileged in a way that exempts them from the very possibility of themselves becoming objects of enquiry. Here again we find Michael Williams right on target: We are meant to think that the sceptic has given us reason to think that all our claims to knowledge of the world are hollow because [the judgement "Here is one hand"] and alljudgments like it are inevitably groundless. The question is, however, "Like in what way?" ... [The] abstract notion of a framework judgment ... requires that the answer be "Like in being affirmed without special testing." This gets us nowhere, since the judgments we affirm this way are so various that there is no obvious kind of judgment to retreat to in our attempt to provide our framework judgments with evidential backing ... [The] argument does nothing to establish the contrast between "framework judgments" and "subjective experiential judgments" that it subsequent1y takes for granted. 17
What of Stroud's suggestion that Moore regards his common-sense truisn1s as more certain than the premises or principles of any sceptical argument intended to call them into question? It is striking to 110tice that Moore's explicit discussion in "Certainty" omits any mention of the comparative
16 "Absolutely certain"? In this context, the expression is pleonastic. Like "It is known that ...", "It is certain that ..." does not admit of degrees or approximations. Compare: "I feel absolutely certain that ...". Here, where certitude is what is at issue, it makes sense to substitute, for instance, "almost absolutely certain". 17 From UD, p. 66.
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idioms prominently featured in citation [R]: "It seems to me more certain that I do know that this is a pencil ... than that any single one of [Russell's] four assumptions is true . . . I do not think it is rational to be as certain of anyone of these four propositions, as of the proposition that I do know that this is a pencil" (my emphases). In the light of what Moore does say, however, it is clear that what is at issue in these comparative constructions can only be certitude. For, the propositional feature being certain is essentially equivalent to -being known, and neither "more known" nor "as known" nor "more nearly lmown" yields an intelligible sense. What Moore is saying about his "con1mon-sense truisms", then-as well as about (in suitable local contexts) "This is a pencil", "You are conscious", and "Here is one hand, and here is another"-is that it is initially lnore reasonable ("rational") to place one's epistemic confidence in the truth of these propositions than in the premises or principles of any sceptical philosophical argument which might be advanced to demonstrate their falsity. The "global" context constituted by the vast collection of "empirical propositions which we affirm without special testing", in other words, is what supplies the standard of "reasonableness" for closing off a dialogue of challenge and response with the remark that it is more reasonable to accept a disputed conclusion than to pursue the further enquiries suggested by the latest challenges. As we have noted, while Stroud is concerned to insist that philosophical enquiry into knowledge is special or peculiar in a way that Moore never satisfactorily grasps and acknowledges, that it is a "detached" and "general" investigation of the possibility of knowledge perse, he is equally concerned to insist that the concept of knowledge to which the philosophical sceptic appeals is neither special nor peculiar. On the contrary, he is anxious to defend the ordinariness and univocality of the sceptic's conception of empirical knowledge. The sceptical demand that a certain possibility-"the dream-possibility"-be ruled out as a necessary condition of any empirical knowledge will otherwise be otiose: We do not ordinary insist on the dream-possibility's being ruled out unless there is some special reason to think it might obtain; the philosopher insists that it must always be known not to obtain in order to know anything about the world around us. But on his understanding of everyday life that difference is not to be explained by insisting on or inventing a conception of knowledge stricter or more demanding than that of the scientist or the lawyer or the plain man. Rather he claims to share with all of us one and the same conception of knowledge-that very conception that operates in everyday and scientific life. (SPS 70) There is a single conception of knowledge at work both in everyday life and in the philosophical investigation of human knowledge, but that conception operates in 195
Certitude Susta ined everyday life under the constraints of social practice and the exigencies of action, cooperation and communication. The practical social purposes served by our assertions and claims to know things in everyday life explain why we are normally satisfied with less than what, with detachment, we can be brought to acknowledge are the full conditions of knowledge. From the detached point of view-when only the question of whether we know is at issue-our interests and assertions in everyday life are seen as restricted in certain ways. Certain possibilities are not even considered, let alone eliminated, certain assumptions are shared and taken for granted and so not exan1ined, and our claims are made and understood as if they were restricted to the particular issues that have explicitly arisen. (SPS 71-2)
Stroud here misses the point that enquiry can be purpose-relative without its defacto ends being narrowly practical in a sense of the term which necessarily contrasts with 'theoretical'. To say that enquiry is purpose-relative, in other words, is not to deny that there are theoretical purposes. Indeed, there are even what one might call epistemic theoretical purposes; for example, being able to give non-trivial explanatory accounts of established laws, or coming to be in a position to draw inferences concerning new cases in a way which explains previously observed cases. 18 In another sense, of course, assertions and claims to know are inevitably "practical"; for, asserting and claiming are themselves practices and so ultimately to be understood in terms of ends. But what are at issue then are not the (many) ends of enquiry per se, but the (llniform) "bookkeeping" ends of tracking cognitive entitlements and responsibilities within any given community of enquiry operating in a determinate context under the direction and constraints of a particular epistemics. Talk about a "detached" context within which "only the question of whether we know is at issue" makes sense only if knowledge is, so to ~peak, the end of enquiry; that is, a determinate state of a person-a state which results from being related in certain determinate ways to the world-at which any enquiry, whatever its proximate motivation, necessarily ultimately aims. The task of a philosophical account of knowledge, correlatively, will then be to fill in the details concerning the conditions for being in that state and that relation, and thereby, inter alia, to arrive at an assessment regarding one's chances, anyone~ chances, of realizing them. Subsequently we will need to explore in detail the coherence of this picture. As I am interpreting him here, in contrast, Moore is committed to the 18 In this connection see Wilfrid Sellars, "On Accepting First Principles", in J. Tomberlin (ed.), Philosophical Perspectives, ii: Epistemology, 1988 (Atascadero, Calif.: Ridgeview, 1988), pp. 301-14, and "Induction as Vindication", Philosophy of Science, 31 (1964), pp. 197-231.
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contrary thesis that all genu.ine enquiry is "practical", both in the sense of being situated, i.e. occurring in a determinate epistemic setting, and in the sense of being teleological, i.e. informed by the conception of a realizable end. It aims at settling belief, at closing an open question, for a purpose. The crux of the matter, then, is that our authentic knowledge-claims, as I think Moore (mostly) understood them, always are "restricted to the particular issues that have explicitly arisen". The basic role of appeals to the concept of knowledge is not to report the achieving of a context-independent epistemic end, but to "keep the books" on epistemic entitlements and responsibilities vis-it-vis an enquiry ain1ed at closing particular open questions by satisfying the requirements of a specific epistemics against a background of shared beliefs not then and there in question. Knowledge-ascriptions are not epistemic state-attributions but perspectival transactional appraisals. Returning then, from this point of view, to Moore's "Proof of an External World" , his fundamental dialectical point, as I am interpreting him, is that, at the outset of our philosophical investigations, the existence of, for example, human hands and, afortiori, the existence of "things to be met with in space" is not an open question. We do not face the task of discovering whether there are material objects. We do not arrive at the knowledge that there are such objects. We begin with that lmowledge. Nor is there any great mystery about how we know of the existence of external things. We encounter them. We interact with them. In particular, we perceive them-we see them, touch them, hear them, even taste and smell them. Unlike the detective and his assistant, we have no need to gather evidence. In this context, then, my earlier, rather mannered, talk of our "investigative strategies and techniques", in consequence, is strictly speaking incorrect. Looking and seeing, for instance, is neither an "investigative strategy" nor a "technique". Strategies and techniques are rather what we must have recourse to when we cannot simply look and see, when we need to gather evidence. Moore himself, alas, sometimes forgets this-adverting, for instance, to "the evidence of his senses"-thereby conceding more to philosophical scepticism than he consistently must or properly should. J. L. Austin, in contrast, had the point clearly in view: The situation in which I would properly be said to have evidence for the statement that some animal is a pig is that, for example, in which the beast itself is not actually on view, but I can see plenty of pig-like marks on the ground outside its retreat ... But if the animal then emerges and stands there plainly in view, there is no longer any question of collecting evidence; its coming into view doesn't provide me with, more evidence that it's a pig, I can now just see that it is, the question is settled. And of course 197
Certitude Sustained I might, in different circumstances, have just seen this in the first place, and not had to bother with collecting evidence at all. 19
But most of the time Moore insists that the sceptic's alleged epistemic context rests on false presuppositions and in consequence is fundamentally incoherent: I certainly did at the moment know that which I expressed by the combination of certain gestures with saying the words "There is one hand and here is another" [sic] ... How absurd it would be to suggest that I did not know it, but only believed it, and that perhaps it was not the case! You might as well suggest that I do not know that I am now standing up and talking-that perhaps after all I'm not, and that it's not quite certain that I am! ("PEW" 146-7)
I want to suggest that Moore's choice here of a further example of something he knows with certainty is not accidental. The point is that if there is an enquiry under way at all, the question of the truth of what Moore asserted when (gesturing appropriately) he said "Here is one hand, and here is another" is no more among its open questions than is the question of whether he asserted anything in the first place; that is, the truth of the claim that Moore was then and there standing up and talking. If there is an enquiry under way at all, then the relevant community is constituted by Moore and his audience, and, within that community, the status of the proposition t?at Moore is standing up and talking is afortiori settled. Assuming that no one in the audience is deaf or blind, all the members of this community of enquiry can see that he is standing and hear that he is talking-and they can all see that he has two hands as well. All of these propositions, that is, begin with non-inferential, non-derivative, epistemic authority. The community is severally and collectively entitled to enter them into its books as known; that is, to treat them as available for enquiry in the role of a premise (as evidence)-unless, of course, there is son1e specific reason for calling one of them into question. For, such initial epistemic authority is not indefeasibility. The special epistemic role of propositions belonging to the initial global context of an enquiry is not logical but methodological. Moore consequently never denies that challenges which are properly motivated in the light of the pertinent episten1ics must be addressed-but he does insist that they then be addressed in the mal1ner that that epistemics requires: If one of you suspected [for some reason] that one of my hands was artificial he might be said to get a proof of my proposition "Here's one hand, and here's another," by 19
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Sense and Sensibilia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962), p. 115,.
Certitude Sustained coming up and exan1ining the suspected hand close up, perhaps touching and pressing it, and so establishing that it really was a human hand. ("PEW" 149)
But, finally, is there an el1quiry under way here at all? That is, is a "detached philosophical assessment of the assertions and knowledge-claims we make in everyday life" (SPS 176-7) in the course of which all one's knowledge of the external world is ostensibly "brought into question at one fell swoop" (SPS 117-18) just one more form of enquiry with its own open questions, settled context, and shared determinate epistemics, a mode of enquiry whose possibility Moore obstinately ignores or irresponsibly overlooks? If, as Stroud does, we take our model of epistemological el1quiry from Descartes, the verdict here, I think, must be that it is not. For, from the epistemological point of view that we have been elucidating, what Descartes describes is arguably at best a mock enquiry. It does not begin with an open question. It begins by proposing to open questions, concerning, for example, the very existence of other persons-questions which, in the context of any collaborative enquiry, informed by a shared epistemics and conducted within a shared global context of settled background information, are already necessarily closed. It is not, therefore, simply a literary conceit that leads him to cast his reflections in the form of a meditation-but, just as mere logical contingency is not a ground for dOlLbt, and infallibility (incorrigibility) in principle cannot be the realizable end which structures any epistemics of enquiry suitable for human beings, solitary meditation is precisely not enquiry. The idea that it is, or could be, is rather another outcropping of what I earlier called the formalist paradign1 in epistemology; that is, the conviction that mathen1atical knowledge is the proper model for knowledge in general, a conviction, it is high time to acknowledge, which itself traditionally rests on an improper llnderstanding of the epistemology of mathematics per se. The picture of the solitary mathematical scholar, reflecting a priori in his armchair, at best fits typical contexts of mathematical discovery. A (suitably trained) mathematician, that is, may well arrive at the conviction that this or that mathematical claim formulates a mathen1atical truth by, so to speak, meditating (perhaps with the aid of pencil and paper) on the behaviour of mathematical objects. But such mathematical beliefs will constitute mathematical knowledge only if they are then1selves true and justified, and justification here, as always, is inferential, perspectival, and intersubjective. Furthermore, at least since the development of non-Euclidean geometries and transfinite arithmetics and the rigorous treatment of functions and infinite sequences, often with strongly counter-intuitive results, made possible by 199
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the techniques of Weierstrass and Cauchy, it is no longer at all plausibleperhaps even no longer really possible-to regard mathematics as resting on a body of "self-evident" truths. On the contrary, the very notion of mathematical truth has become ab initio problematic. Consider, for example, the classical Parallel Postulate, in one formulation: (PP)
Through any point not on a given line exactly one line can be drawn parallel to the given line.
Is (PP) true? That doesn't seem to be something that many mathematicians (or philosophers) would nowadays be willing to say without qualification. A natural amendment is to relativize (PP) to a specific mathematical system, saying, for instance, that (PP) is true in Euclidean geometry. 20 But despite the naturalness of this move, it is hardly entirely perspicuous, for what is "Euclidean geometry", and in what sense does it "say"-or perhaps "imply"?-that (PP) is true? One strategy, of course, would be to treat "Euclidean geometry" as picking out a text; say, Euclid's Elements. In that case, (PP) will be "true in Euclidean geometry" only if it is true that: according to Euclid's Elements, exactly one line parallel to a given line can be drawn through any point not on the given line. But that obviously won't do; for, we also want to be able to say correctly, for instance, that Euclidean geometry admits of indefinitely many alternative axiomatizations, and while it n1akes sense to say this of a mathematical system, it makes no sense to say it of a text. The obvious proposal at this point is to pick out or identify Euclidean geometry by means of such axiomatizations themselves. Roughly, Euclidean geometry will be the geometrical system represented by any collection of axioms and postulates demonstrably equivalent to those advanced in Euclid's Elements (and its historical successors), and a claim will be "true in Euclidean geometry" whenever it is provable in (some consistent extension of) every such axiomatization. 21 Correlatively, the requisite ("pure", Euclidean) geometrical concepts-point, line, plane, intersection, congruence, etc.-will be "implicitly defined" by those axiomatizations. On this interpretation, then, the notion of mathematical truth essentially 20 Alternatively, we could begin by saying that (PP) is true of Euclidean points and lines, or true of points and lines in a Euclidean space, but, since "Euclidean points and lines" and "Euclidean space" are no less in need of elucidation than "Euclidean geometry", these would arguably turn out to be only expository variations on the fundamental theme; namely, the conceptual dependence of the notion of mathematical truth on that of mathematical proof. 21 The last parenthetical phrase is intended to address Bill Lycan's worry about Godelian incompleteness.
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depends upon the notion of mathematical proof But whether some candidate (diagram, reasoning, sequence of inscriptions, etc.) counts as an acceptable proof of some mathematical claim is determined not by any individual's "insight" or convictions, but by checking it against the appropriate intersubjective (public) norms of correctness. In particular, the axiomatic-mathematical requirement that proper demonstrations be effective procedures implies that whether any specific sequence of expressions is or is not a correct proof of a specific theorem or metatheorem (or a corresponding demonstration of unprovability) is itself an empirical question and its answer a matter of fact. The question of whether a given claim is provable in this or that axiomatization, or whether two axiomatizations are demonstrably equivalent, consequently, if it can be resolved at all, is ultimately settled by empirical enquiry. And that puts us once again firmly in the Moorean territory of contingent, fallible, and intersubjective knowledge, emerging from contextually determinate enquiry guided by a specific epistemics against a particular background of shared beliefs. I want to suggest, then, that, contrary to Stroud's assessment of him, Moore in the last analysis actually understood the "peculiar nature" of traditional sceptical epistemological enquiry very well indeed-understood it, that is, as a proposed project, but, rejecting its essential presuppositions, not as a real possibility. Al1d if, as Stroud insists, it is still true that "with detachment, we can be brought to acknowledge" the Cartesian constraints as expressing "the full conditions of knowledge" (SPS 71-2), then perhaps that is only a reflection of the curious and often unfortunate fact that "with detachment" we can sometimes be persuaded to forget, if only for a time, that situated and fallible human beings is what we are.
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Peircean Enquiry: Knowledge without Truth
6
The beginning of knowledge is the discovery of something we do not understand. Frank Herbert
Ansgar Beckermann begins his essay "Wissen lInd wahre Meinung" ("WWM") ("Knowledge and True Belief")l with an exploration and partial defence of von Kutschera's concept-externalist "minimal concept of knowledge", as von Kutschera himself calls it, first encountered at the end of Chapter 3. What it is crucial to understand, Beckermann argues, is that in his reflections on the concept of knowledge, von Kutschera is in pursuit of a completely different goal from that pursued by most other authors. He is not interested in providing a definition that most accurately captures the intention (or at least the extension) of the concept of knowledge embodied in our everyday discourse, but rather in developing a concept of knowledge that best serves the needs of a systematic epistemology. For him, the decisive question is: Are there systematic grounds for preferring alternative concepts of knowledge narrower than the minimal concept? ("WWM" 31)2
1 In Wolfgang Lenzen (ed.), Die weite Spektrum der analytischen Philosophie: Festschriftfur Franz von Kutschera(Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1997), pp. 24-43. 2 "[In dieser Passage wird vollig klar, daB] von Kutschera in seinen Uberlegungen zum Wahrheitsbegriff ein ganz anderes Ziel verfolgt als die meisten anderen Autoren. Ihm geht es nicht urn eine Definition, die die Intension (oder zumindest die Extension) des alltagssprachlichen Wissenbegriffs moglichst genau einfangt, sondern um die Entwicklung eines Wissensbegriffs, der den systematischen Bedurfnissen der Erkenntnistheorie am besten entspricht. Fur ihn lautet die entscheidende Frage daher: Gibt es systematische Grunde dafiir, alternative, engere Wissensbegriffe dem minimalen Begriff (MinW) vorzuziehen?"
Peircean Enquiry
Von Kutschera's answer to this question is evidently "No", and Beckermann is prepared to argue that there is at least a sense in which that is also the correct answer. Beckermann's own leading thesis, in fact, is that fronl a systematic point of view, the traditional tripartite concept of knowledge is an absurdity. It conjoins things that do not belong together, and whose conjoining can only produce confusion. This concept has no place in systematically conducted epistemology. From a systematic point of view, therefore, attempting to capture the intention (or at least the extension) of this concept with greater precision serves absolutely no purpose. ("WWM" 42)3
What the traditional JTB conception of knowledge mistakenly conjoins, Beckermann argues, are the answers to distinct epistemological questions. We should think of a systematic epistemological theory, he suggests, as offering answers to three fundamental questions: (1) (2) (3)
What is the goal of our cognitive efforts? How-by what means and procedures-can we reach that goal? (And in which areas can we reach it?) How-with the help of what criteria-can we check whether and to what extent we have reached it? ("WWM" 39)4
Concept externalism gives the answer to the first of these questions: "What we aspire to are true beliefs-no more and no less" ("WWM" 39).5 Appeals to reliable beliefforming methods, in contrast, typically address the second question. Such methods are epistemologically significant not in and of themselves, but only as essential and indispensable means for achieving our sole epistemic end: It is precisely someone who holds the view that our cognitive efforts aim at true beliefs and nothing else, who will consequently be especially concerned with reliable nlethods for gaining knowledge, for without such methods, he cannot reach his goal. But 3 "Der traditionelle dreigliedrige Wissensbegriff ist ... systematisch gesehen ein Unding. Er bring Dinge zusammen, die nicht zusammengehoren und die zusammenzubringen nur Verwirrung stiften kann. Dieser Begriff hat in einer systematisch betriebenen Erkenntnistheorie keinen Platz. Es hat deshalb-von einem systen1atischen Standpunkt aus gesehen-auch gar keinen Zweck, zu versuchen, die Intension (oder zumindest die Extension) dieses Begriffs durch einen pdiziseren einzufangen." 4 "(1) Was ist das Ziel unserer Erkenntnisbemiihungen? (2) Wie-mit welchen Mitteln und Verfahren-konnen wir dieses Ziel erreichen? (Und in welchen Bereichen konnen wir es erreichen?) (3) Wie-mit Hilfe welcher Kriterien-konnen wir iiberpriifen ob bzw. inwieweit wir dieses Ziel erreicht haben?" 5 "Was wir anstreben, sind wahre Uberzeugungen-nicht mehr und nicht weniger."
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Peircean Enquiry that goal itself is not defined by such methods. Le., answers to questions regarding reliable methods for gaining knowledge are answers to the second, not the first, of epistemology's three fundamental questions. ("WWM" 39)6
Appeals to justification, finally, are addressed to the third fundamental question. When we seek a justification, Beckermann argues, what we want to know is whether we can rely on what others (or even we ourselves) are convinced of; whether we can take their beliefs as starting points for our own thinking and acting; in other words: whether those beliefs are (likely) true. ("WWM" 40)7
From this perspective, a belief is justified only if it possesses some feature indicative of its probable truth. Both having originated from reliable beliefforn1ing processes and being such that the believer can cite good reasons in support of it are such features ("WWM" 41). On these points, Beckermann aligns himself with Sartwell: justification (a) gives procedures by which true beliefs are obtained, and (b) gives standards for evaluating the products of such procedures with regard to that goal. From the point of view of (a), justification prescribes techniques by which knowledge is gained. From the point of view of (b), it gives a criterion for knowledge. But in neither case does it describe a logically necessary condition for knowledge. ("WKM" 174)
In short, Beckermann concludes, truth and justification are answers to two completely different epistemological questions. Truth is the goal, and justification only a means or a criterion. What we aspire to are true beliefs. Whether a belief isjustified interests us only because as a rule its truth is not obvious. ("WWM" 41)8
In contrast, when the truth of someone's belief is obvious-when someone advances a trivial claim or one which we are naturally inclined to take for 6 "Gerade wer die Auffassung vertritt, das Ziel unserer Erkenntnisbemiihungen seien wahre Uberzeugungen und sonst nichts, wird sich daher in besonderer Weise urn verHiBliche Methoden der Erkenntnisgewinning bemiihen. Denn ohne solche Methoden kann er sein Ziel nicht erreichen. A1lerdings wird das Ziel selbst durch diese Methoden nicht definiert. D.h., Antworten auf die Frage nach verHiBlichen Methoden der Erkenntnisgewinnung sind Antworte auf die zweite, nicht auf die erste der drei Grundfragen der Erkenntnistheorie." 7 "Wei! wir wissen wollen, ob wir uns auf das, wovon andere (oder auch wir selbst) iiberzeugt sind, verlassen kennen, ob wir in unserem Denken und Handeln von ihren Uberzeugungen ausgehen kennen, mit anderen Worten: ob diese Uberzeugungen (wahrscheinlich) wahr sind." 8 "Wahrheit und Rechtfertigung sind Antworten auf zwei ganz verschiedene Fragen der Erkenntnistheorie. Wahrheit ist das Ziel und Rechtfertigung nur ein Mittel bzw. Ein Kriterium. Was wir anstreben, sind wahre Uberzeugungen. Ob eine Uberzeugung gerechtjertigt ist, interessiert . uns nur deshalb, wei! ihre Wahrheit in der Regel nicht auf der Hand liegt."
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granted, e.g. that 2 + 2 = 4 or that on a clear day the sky is blue-we characteristically do not seek any justification. In such cases, the question "How do you know?" is discursively out of place. Beckermann concedes, then, that from a systematic point of view, epistemology has a place both for the "concept-externalist" notion of a true belief and the "concept-internalist" notion of an adequately justified belief, but he insists that the two notions play completely different theoretical roles. The classical JTB conception of knowledge, however, is an unholy hybrid of both, and once this is recognized, Beckermann suggests, rather than proceeding fruitlessly to debate the question of which notion better captures the concept of knowledge, the most sensible course is to abandon talk about knowledge and restrict ourselves to the concepts of true belief and justified belief. For all that, however, we may nevertheless want to develop our systematic epistemological theory in a way that still assigns a central role to a concept of knowledge. In that case, Beckermann concludes, it seems most reasonable to use the term 'knowledge' to express the goal of our cognitive efforts. If we do this, though, there is no alternative to the minimal concept of knowledge, i. e., to identifying knowledge with true belief. For the goal of all cognitive effort is true belief and nothing else. ("WWM" 42-3)9
The thesis that, as Sartwell puts it, justification is subordinate to truth, that our epistemic goal is true belief, while justification is a means by which we reach this goal and a means by which we confirm that this goal has been reached ("KMTB" 161)
is almost a foregone conclusion in epistemological circles. Thus Laurence BonJour, for example, writes 10 : The idea of justification is a generic one, admitting in principle of many specific varieties. Thus the acceptance of an empirical belief might be morally justified . . . or pragmati'cally justified ... or religiously justified ... etc. But none of these other varieties of justification can satisfy the justification condition for knowledge. Knowledge requires epistemicjustification, and the distinguishing feature of this particular species of justification is ... its essential or internal relationship to the cognitive goal of truth. Cognitive doings are epistemically justified ... only if and to the extent that they are 9 "In diesem Fall scheint es am vernunftigsten, den Ausdruck 'Wissen' als Ausdruck rur das Ziel unserer Erkenntnisbemuhingen zu verwenden. Wenn man dies tut, gibt es jedoch keine Alternative zum minimalen Wissenbegriff, d.h., zur Identifikation von Wissen mit wahrer Uberzeugung. Denn das Ziel aller Erkenntnisbemuhungen sind wahre Uberzeugungen und nichts anderes." 10 In "Can Empirical Knowledge Have a Foundation?" ("eEK") American Philosophical Quarrerry, 15 (1978),pp. 1-13.
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Peircean Enquiry aimed at this goal-which means roughly that one accepts all and only beliefs which one has good reason to think are true. ("CEK" 5)
The same view is explicitly advocated by Paul Moser: 11 [Epistemic] justification is essentially related to the ... cognitive goal of truth, insofar as an individual belief is epistemically justified only if it is appropriately directed toward the goal of truth. More specifically ... one is epistemically justified in believing a proposition only if one has good reason to believe it is true. (ElM 4)
by William Alston, who describes the concept of justification relevant to knowledge as a specifically epistemic mode of evaluation, one taken from the "epistemic point of view" defined by the aim of maximizing truth and minimizing falsity in a large body of beliefs (El84)
and by Susan Haack, who writes that: The goal of inquiry is substantial, significant, illuminating truth; the concept of justification is specifically focused on security, on the likelihood of beliefs being true. Hence ... truth-indicative is what criteria of justification need to be to be good. (E&I203)12
But what does it mean for truth or true belief to be the goal of our cognitive activities; in particular, the goal of enquiry? The specification or formulation of a goal (end, aim, purpose) is characteristically the first step in a process of means-ends reasoning. In traditional terms, it yields the major premise of a practical syllogism: (PI)
I/We shall achieve end E.
(P2)
The only/best means for achieving E are M.
(P3)
So, I/we shall adopt M.
The point of 'shall' in the major premise and COl1clusion here is to indicate and emphasize the relationship of such reasoning to actual conduct. 'Shall', that is, expresses a standillg or proximate intention. Where what falls within its scope is, so to speak, an "executable" conduct, such an intention in appropriate circumstances issues, other things being equal, directly in an instance of that conduct. Indeed, the episodes of thought In Empirical Justification (EJM) (Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel, 1985). Susan Haack, Evidence and Inquiry: Towards Reconstruction in Epistemology (E&I) (Oxford and Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1993). 11
12
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and speech constituting a person's intentions and volitions, considered as representations, would not have the intentional content that they do unless, considered as occurrent events, they actualized the appropriate causal potencies. Wilfrid Sellars elucidated this point in connection with language acquisition: Consider the child who is learning to use sentences which, as we say, forn1ulate intentions . . . From the standpoint of non-functional description, it is a n1atter of learning how to use sentences involving [we shall suppose for simplicity] the sound 'shall': I shall now raise my hand. Clearly the child has not learned how to use this sound unless he acquires the propensity to raise his hand, ceteris paribus, upon uttering (or being disposed to utter) the sound 'I shall now raise my hand.' Given that this propensity has been acquired, a necessary condition has been met for redescribing his utterances of the sound'- shall-' as sayings of '-shall-.' ("A&E" 192-3)13
In practical cognition, in short, goals (ends, aims, or purposes)-typically particularized through means-specifying action. policies, plans, and strategies-are caught up causally in the genesis of (dispositions to) individual executable conducts. In the present instance, we are concerned with epistemic ends and, correlatively, with epistemic conducts. What we need, to make sense of the idea that true belief is the goal of enquiry, then, is an instantiation of this general practical syllogistic forn1 which establishes a connection between a commitment to that goal and the actual conduct of enqu.iry; that is, which shows how our having the goal of truth can structure our actual concrete cognitive-epistemic practices. Taking our cue from Beckermann's discussion, the most direct epistemic instantiation of the general practical syllogistic form evidently looks something like this: (PIa)
We shall believe what is true.
(P2a)
The best/only way to (come to) believe what is true is to believe what we are justified in believing.
(P3a)
So, we shall believe what we are justified in believing.
As it stands, however, this formulation manifestly presupposes an ul1acceptable voluntarism with respect to beliefs. This is a point that we have already
13
Wilfrid Sellars, "Actions and Events" ("A&E"), Nous, 7 (1973), pp. 179-202.
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canvassed in connection with Alston's objections 14 to "deontological" concepts of justification. Although believing is, broadly speaking, something a person does, it is not an executable conduct. One does not decide and choose what one will believe. One simply finds oneself in fact believing or disbelieving this or that, and the explanation of that fact may, but need not, mention any sort of warrant, grounds, evidence, or justificatory reasoning. The practical syllogism (Pla)-(P3a) consequently does not yet establish the sought connection between a commitn1ent to the goal of truth and actual concrete cognitive-epistemic activities. At this point some philosophers propose to distinguish between (mere) belief and some form of "acceptance". Here, for instance, is how Keith Lehrer draws such a distinction: There is a special kind of acceptance requisite to knowledge. It is accepting something for the purpose of attaining truth and avoiding error with respect to the very thing one accepts. More precisely, the purpose is to accept that p if and only if p. Sometimes we believe things that we do not accept for this epistemic purpose. We may believe something for the sake of felicity rather than from a regard for truth. We may believe that a loved one is safe because of the pleasure of so believing, though there is no evidence to justify accepting this out of regard for truth, indeed, even when there is evidence against it. So there are cases in which we do not accept in the appropriate way what we believe. It is [not belief per se, but rather] the acceptance of something in the quest for truth that is the required condition of knowledge. (TK 11)
Formulations framed in terms of intentions to "accept" certainly sound better than those appealing to intentions to believe, since there are indeed cases of "accepting" which are executable conducts-accepting someone's proposal of marriage, for instance, or a business offer; for example, to sell or purchase an item of property. But while Lehrer's suggestions here may ultimately turn out to be useful in various ways, they unfortunately do not address the problem of doxastic voluntarism at all. For, although not all believing is accepting, evidently, as Lehrer uses the terms, all accepting is believing. On the face of it, accepting that p is just a special case of believing that p-roughly, believing tl1at p for epistemically respectable reasonsand, if this is so, then one can no more decide and choose what one will accept than one can decide and choose what one will believe. This sort of "accepting", in short, is not an executable conduct. Once again we have 14 Mostly in "Concepts of Epistemic Justification" and "The Deontological Conception of Epistemic Justification", essays 4 and 5 of EJ.
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failed to discover a connection between our having the goal of truth and our actual concrete cognitive-epistemic activities. On the face of it, D. S. Clarke, jun., has more success than Lehrer in distinguishing acceptance from belief: "The acceptance or rejection of a proposition as true or false" , he writes, 15 "is a dateable psychological act", whereas when we ascribe belief ... to another person, we are ascribing to him or her a dispositional state that persists over an indefinite period of time. (RAP 32) Belief is a dispositional state of indefinite duration. (RAP 33)
Again: belief admits of degrees ranging from certainty in a proposition p to certainty of p's negation, while acceptance ... is all-or-nothing. A person either accepts p or he doesn't, though we can. . . distinguish between terminal and provisional acceptance. (RAP 33)
According to Clarke, provisional acceptance consists in the decision to treat a proposition as sufficiently plausible to merit further consideration; paradigmatically, experiential testing: In contrast to this initial acceptance, there is what we can refer to as the terminal acceptance of [a hypothesis] h or its negation (the rejection of h as false) on the basis of results of observational testing. (RAP 11) To accept a hypothesis as true ... is to convert it fronl its provisional status as subject to testing to what now is no longer in question and which functions to guide actions taken in future inquiry. This relation between acceptance and transition to inclusion in background knowledge is a conceptual relation analogous to that between acceptance and commitment to action in practical deliberation. Inclusion in the background is a logical result of acceptance, not a contingent consequence. If a given hypothesis does not actually function as an assumption guiding inquiry, then a person ... has not-really accepted the hypothesis. It still has for him provisional status. (RAP 13)
The most fundamental difference between acceptance and belief, however, is precisely that our acceptance of a proposition p is invariably voluntary and within our control. We must decide to either (ternlinally) accept p or refuse to accept it. To refuse to accept p is to either provisionally accept it, that is, accept p as a candidate for testing, rej ect p, that is, accept its negation not-p, or remain undecided about p and undertake no
15 In Rational Acceptance and Purpose; An Outline of a Pragmatist Epistemology (RAP) (Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Littlefield, 1989), p. 31.
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Peircean Enquiry commitments to subsequent actions. Acceptance and each of these alternatives as acts within the control of the agent are open to evaluation by such terms as 'ought', 'rational', or 'justified' [,] 'irrational' or 'unjustified'. In contrast to acts of acceptance and rejection, belief and disbelief in a proposition seem to be psychological states over which we have no control ... But if [states of belief] are involuntary, then it would seem impossible to say that a person ought to hold a given belief, and hence say that the belief is rational or justified, for' ought' and its attendant normative terms have no application to the involuntary. (RAP 34)
Clarke recognizes, of course, that we do sometimes criticize a person's beliefs as, for exan1ple, irrational or unjustified. But in such cases, he insists, it is some relevant act of acceptance that is being evaluated as irrational or unjustified. The belief is open to criticism only so far as it is the result of such an act (RAP 35)
As plausible as all this may sound, I want to argue that, in the last analysis, when it comes to distinguishing acceptance from belief, Clarke is actually no better off than Lehrer. Whereas provisional acceptance is, indeed, a voluntary action subject to rational appraisal, what Clarke calls 'terminal acceptance', by his own lights, cannot be. The reason, to put it briefly, is that, as Clarke hin1self insists, "there is no [terminal] acceptance that is not accompanied by belief" (RAP 33). According to Clarke, tern1inal acceptance and belief are related as an act and its result: To accept as true the proposition that it is raining results in one's believing that it is raining, n1uch as the result of shutting the door is that the door is shut. (RAP 34)
This relationship, however, he argues, is not a causal connection but rather a conceptualone: "In such cases an act logically entails a state as its result" (RAP 34): To describe a belief as the result of an act of acceptance is to describe the belief in a cer~ tain way, not to characterize it as an effect of a mysterious, nonphysical cause. (RAP 42)
Terminally accepting a proposition, in other words, is ostensibly one way of coming to believe that proposition,16 and one (logically) cannot genuinely (terminally) accept a proposition without thereby coming to believe it. But now it should be clear that something has gone wrong; for, if terminal acceptance of a proposition p is a voluntary act which necessarily results in a belief that p, then a person can evidently voluntarily put himself into a state of believing that p after all, simply by choosing to perform that act. 16 But not the only way. Clarke n1entions "beliefs inculcated in early childhood" as one sort of exception (RAP 34).
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It is easy to go astray in such matters. On the one hand, there is a use of 'accept'-in particular, in the expression'accept as true'-according to which what a person accepts (as true) just is what she confidently believes. Indeed, fron1 time to time, Clarke avails himself of just this usage; for example: From [X's] assents or dissents to [appropriate] questions we infer ... that X does or does not believe that this object is red or that object is blue. Then we compare his beliefs with what we accept as true, that is, compare them with what we call the relevant "facts" in order to determine whether they are true or false. (RAP 37, myen1phasis)
And, as I have already noted, there are in fact voluntary acts of provisional acceptance; that is, acts of selecting p as a hypothesis for experiential testing or of temporarily assuming or supposing that p, dialectically, in order to determine and explore its potential consequences. On the other hand, there are also" all-or-nothing" datable events of coming to believe that p that we indeed describe in "psychological-act" terms-for example, concluding (deducing, inferring) that p; discovering (realizing, recognizing) that p; noticing (observing, discerning) that p; and so on. If "acceptance" is a genus of coming to believe, then those and similar "psychological acts" are its species. But none of these ostensible psychological acts is a voluntary action. One does not and cannot simply choose or decide what to conclude, discover, or notice. What has in fact happened here is that Clarke himself has concluded that there must be voluntary acts of acceptance, for otherwise we could not make sense of assessing beliefs as rational or irrational, justified or unjustified: Both 'rational' and 'justified' are normative terms and when applied to belief imply that a belief ought to be held. This in turn presupposes that in some sense whether or not the belief is held is within the control of the agent. (RAP 39) When we apply 'justified' or 'rational' to a belief, we assume the belief to be the result of an act of acceptance that could be withheld. (RAP 41)
The crucial operative premise in Clarke's reasoning, in other words, is proceduralism: the thesis that normative appraisals apply in the first instance to the "executable" conducts of persons, i.e. to their voluntary actions, and his argument is thus a sort of transcendental deduction: If there were no voluntary acts of acceptance, we couldn't normatively appraise believers or their beliefs; we can normatively appraise believers and their beliefs; hence, there must be voluntary acts of acceptance. But although such proceduralism is entirely unobjectionable, it does not imply Clarke's conclusion-first, because, as I have just argued, the conclusion is demonstrably false (i.e. terminal acceptance cannot 211
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be a voluntary action), and, second, because, as we saw in Chapter 3, the possibility of normatively appraising believers and their beliefs can be secured by applying the proceduralist stance prospectively, to potential future justificatory activities; for example, seeking evidence and giving reasons. There is consequently no need to posit (non=existent) voluntary acts of acceptance. That way of trying to demonstrate a connection between our putative comn1itment to the goal of truth and our actual concrete cognitive-epistemic activities is simply a non-starter. The moral of these reflections is perhaps that we should in fact begin at the other end. What are our actual concrete cognitive-epistemic activities? What executable epistemic conducts can stand as termini a quo of structures of practical cognition which begin with the specification of truth as our goal, aim, or end? As we recall, Alston proposes (EJ 92-3) that while we cannot choose what to believe, we can actively attempt appropriately to shape our beliefforming and belief-sustaining propensities. But is it really clear what Alston has in n1ind here? For instance, if I am prone to believe whatever I read in the daily newspaper, and if that is not in fact an effective means for arriving at predominantly true beliefs, should I then take steps to try to extinguish my bad epistemic habit? If so, how? Perhaps something like aversion therapy would help-e.g. a small electric shock, administered whenever I defend one of my beliefs against a sceptical challenge by citing the newspaper as its source-but the suggestion is plainly absurd. On the face of it, Sellars' forward-looking version of the proceduralist view comes off better here. As we have seen, Sellars is basically concerned with what a believer can do tojustify her beliefs, however formed, if and when they are appropriately challenged. On this conception, justification is itself in the first instance a cognitive-epistemic activity-giving reasons, citing evidence, enumerating grounds-and being in a position to engage in such activities can and often will itself be a consequel1ce of having engaged in other, preparatory and enabling, cognitive-epistemic conducts-seeking reasons, evidence, or grounds for what one in fact believes, however one in fact has come to believe it. This view apparently harmonizes well with the idea tl1at justification is a means by which we reach the epistemic goal of true belief. What specifically counts as seeking reasons, grollnds, or evidence for a belief will vary according to the details of epistemic context. And, of course, one is often in a position to offer justifications for legitimately challenged beliefs without needing to undertake any additional epistemic projects. Frequently-perhaps even typically-it will be the case th.at one has come to believe what one does by concluding that one's actual salient 212
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grounds, evidence, and reasons best support that belief. Indeed, as we have seen, there are some beliefs-paradigmatically, perceptual beliefs-that one arguably cannot have unless one is in a position to justify them. This, we recall, was one of the roots of Sellars' strong iI1ternalism: One does not know what, for example, 'red' means-one does not have the concept red-unless one knows w11at it is for something to be red, and that requires that one know what sorts of considerations count for and against the claim that somethil1g is red. The upshot of these considerations, however, is that, on this conception, the relevant executable epistemic conducts can be specified only generically, as whatever is necessary to put one into a position to justify one's beliefs if they are legitimately challenged. The corresponding practical syllogism, then, looks like this: (PIa)
We shall believe what is true.
(P2a)
The best/only way to (come to) believe what is true is to believe what we are justified in believing.
(P2b)
We are justified in believing only what we are in a position to justify if our belief is legitimately challenged.
(P3b)
So, we shall do whatever is necessary in order to be in a position to justify our beliefs if they are legitimately challenged.
The additional pren1ise here, (P2b) simply makes explicit the proceduralist connection between one's beliifbeingjustified or the state of being justified in believing and the epistemic activity of justification. Unlike the unacceptably voluntaristic argument (Pla)-(P3a), the present argument, (Pla)-(P3b), at least looks like an acceptable epistemic instantiation of the general practical syllogistic form with which we began, but, even if it is, we are still a long way from connecting the putative overriding epistemic goal of truth specified by PIa to determinate executable cognitive-epistemic activities. In fact,though, the present argument as it stands is also not entirely ul1problematic. To appreciate this, however, we need to take a closer look at some of the details. For example, is it in fact the case that, as premise (P2a) claims, the best or only way to (come to) believe what is true is to believe what we are justified in believing? On certain conceptions of justification, necessarily so. We have already mentioned, for instance, Beckern1ann's clain1 that "a belief, that p, is justified just in case it possesses some feature from which it follows that p is (probably) true" ("WWM" 41). And, indeed, if we thus simply identify being justified with possessing a feature indicative of (probable) truth, then believing what is justified will trivially be a means for (coming to) 213
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believe what is true. Will it also necessarily be the best or only means for doing so? It would seem so, for there is and can be no effective procedure for identifying true beliefs as such; that is, no epistemically accessible truth-determinative feature of beliefs. Our beliefs about the world are always fallible, and, given that this is so, it is hard to imagine any alternative to seeking justified beliefs, much less a better alternative. The impossibility of there being epistemically accessible truth-determinative features of beliefs, however, suggests that there may well be a problem about identifying the (merely) truth-indicative features that, on the current conception, are needed if a belief is to be justified. In an entirely traditional vein, Beckermann proposes two such features: Beliefs that result from reliable belief-forming methods are consequently justified; but so are beliefs for which the believing person S can produce good reasons. For this feature also indicates that what Sbelieves is true. ("WWM" 41)17
Earlier I argued that the externalist stance implicit here is dialectically unstable, but, for present purposes, let us allow such externalist intuitions free rein. Is it in fact the case that a belief's being the result of the operation of reliable belief-forming methods is an indication that the belief is justified; that is, on the present conception, probably true? As the notion of reliability has mostly been understood, necessarily so; for, on the received understanding, a beliefforming method is reliable only whel1 its operation in fact predominately issues in true beliefs. And if the reliability of a method is thus simply identified with its yielding a strongly favourable truth-ratio, then the statistical (metrical) probability that any given belief resulting from its operation is true will be strongly positive; that is, significantly greater than chance. 18 Something quite similar applies to Beckermann's second suggestion, that a believer's being able to produce good reasons for his belief is an indication that the belief is justified; that is, probably true. For, by virtue of what is a proffered reason-say, r-for believing that-p a good reason for believil1g that-p? The traditional answer, surely, is that the fact that r substantially increases the 17 "Eine Uberzeugung, daB p, ist genau dann gerechtfertigt, wenn sie ein Merkmal besitzt, aus dem. hervorgeht, daB p (wahrscheinlich) wahr ist. Uberzeugungen, die durch verHiBliche Methoden gewonnen wurden, sind also gerechtfertigt; aber auch Uberzeugungen, fur die die jeweilige Person S gute Griinde anfuhren kann. Denn auch dieses Merkmal spricht dafiir, daB das, was S glaubt, wahrist." 18 Cf. Susan Haack: "Our criteria of justification are, indeed, what we take to be indications of the truth, or likely truth, of a belief. Reliabilism, however, identifies the criteria of justification with whatever is in fact truth-indicative, whether or not we take it to be ... The effect is to trivialize the question, whether our criteria of justificationreally are truth-indicative" (E&1141).
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likelihood that p is true; that is, that the conditional probability of p given r is significantly greater than the prior probability of p. The difficu.1ty comes when we attempt to transform such trivial necessities into concrete epistemological policies or procedures. For, on the face of it, in order to establish that some belief-forming method is reliable, i.e. yields a strongly favourable truth-ratio, we evidently need some independent means of ascertaining whether the beliefs resulting from operations or applications of the method are predominantly true. Correlatively, in order to establish that some candidate reasons, grounds, or evidence, r, are good reasons, grounds, or evidence for believing that p, we need to establish that the existence, occurrence, or obtaining of r increases the likelihood that p is true, and it is again hard to see how we could establish this unless we had available some independent way of ascertaining that p is always or often true whenever r is the case. At this point, our freshly liberated externalist will probably object that we do not need to establish that our belief-forming methods are reliable (correlatively, that our presumptive evidence is truth-indicative) in order to be justified in believing what we do. It suffices that our beliefs result from the operation or application of methods that are infactreliable (correlatively, are based on reasons, grounds, or evidence that are in fact truth-indicative). John Rei!, for example, distingu.ishes 19 between epistemic principles which do and those which do not require that "an agent who satisfies· [them] be in a position to validate [them] or to recognize that [they have] in fact been satisfied" ("S&R" 60). The latter have the general form (J4)
S is justified in believingp just in case S's belief possessesf,
where the characteristic f might be a complex property or disjunction of properties ... for instance, the property of being self-evident or being a consequence of a self-evident belief; or . . . the property of having been produced by a reliable belief-forming process. What is crucial is that a principle of this kind could be satisfied by an agent who was utterly ignorant off, and ignorant as well of the fact that a belief's possession offprovides grounds for regarding that belief true. ("S&R" 60)
The dialectic that Reil pursues at this point is a familiar one. On the one hand, he observes that a belief's merely satisfying a principle of the form (J4) would not by itself give S a reason for the belief. There being reasons for an agent's believing something, he concedes, differs from that agent's having reasons for believing something, and the notion of epistemic justification 19
In "Skepticism and Realism" ("S&R"), American Philosophical Quarterly, 35 (1998), pp. 57-72.
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arguably incorporates the latter notion; that is, the notion of believingfor reasons. This suggests that what we need are instead internalist principles of the form: (Js)
S is justified in believingp just in case S's belief possessesh and S justifiably believes both that his belief that p possesses f and that it is in virtue of its possession of f that his belief that p is justified. ("S&R" 61)
"But on such principles every justified belief, i.e. every belief held for reasons, is justified in the light of some other justified belief, and "we seen1 doon1ed to an immediate and vicious regress of reasons" ("S&R" 61). One possible moral, concludes Hei!, is "that if we insist that only beliefs held for reasons could be justified or count as instances of knowledge, we thereby immediately rule out the possibility of knowledge or justified belief" (" S&R" 61). The proximate moral that Heil hin1self draws from these considerations, however, is that, on any account which"does not turn knowledge into a kind of impossible object", epistemic properties must supervene on non-epistemic properties ("S&R" 61-2).20 But, of course, not just any non-episten1ic properties will do. For, epistemic justification of the sort required for knowledge must be truth-linked. I could be scrupulously rational, internally coherent, and evidentially faultless, yet lack knowledge-not because my beliefs are false, but because my holding them is in no way owing to their being true. This requirement on justification cannot be avoided merely by upping internal standards of epistemic rigor. Even indubitability, Cartesian style certainty, leaves us shy of the goal. What is needed is not more by way of certainty ... but a link to the truth ("S&R" 64)
The general picture of knowledge at which Reil arrives is thus classically externalist: I know some empirical proposition . . . provided certain conditions are satisfied. I need know nothing of these conditions, and, although I may be, I certainly need not be in a position to establish that these conditions are satisfied or that their satisfaction suffices for knowledge. ("S&R" 64)
This is the point at which, as Heil proposes to understand hin1, "the skeptic challenges us to provide convincing grounds for thinking that we do in fact have knowledge" ("S&R" 64-5). Hei! invites us to consider "our total 20 Sosa identifies this as "the basic motivation for formal foundationalism": "the view that the (actual and possible) conditions within which [some normative property] P would apply can be generally (perhaps recursively) specified" (KP 179).
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belief-forming process, Pt" including "perceptual processes, reasoning, memory, and whatever else generates belief", and to suppose "that P t is in fact reliable [and so] yields justified beliefs that, when true, constitute instances of knowledge". Then there is, he argues, no epistemically non-circular way to establish that P t is reliable, since any attempt to do so "would require an appeal to beliefs we are entitled to accept only on the assumption that P t is reliable" ("S&R" 67). This sceptic's challenge, he concludes, in fact cannot be met. Heil himself does not consider this conclusion an occasion for epistemic despair: We cannot do the impossible; we cannot vindicate ourselves epistemically without appealing to beliefs whose warrant depends on our being episten1ically vindicated, but that is scarcely cause for alarm-any more than our inability to locate a square circle should be cause for alarm. ("S&R"68)
As Ernest Sosa has argued,21 there is no reason to be troubled by our inability to produce a vindication vvhich it is demonstrably impossible to produce. Instead, Heil suggests, we should treat this form of scepticism as "a meditation on realism", that is, as drawing out the epistemological implications of the metaphysical view that the world is "mind-independent" in the sense that "we must distinguish the way things are-however they are-from the way we take them to be-however we take them to be" ("S&R" 69). "To accept skepticism", he concludes, "is just to accept what we all along suspected: there are no a priori guarantees that our efforts to arrive at the truth will succeed. And in this the skeptic is surely right" ("S&R" 70). The essential characteristic of objective truth is that it does not depend on belief. It is a platitude22 that the fact that someone believes that p, or even the fact that everyone believes that p, does not imply that it is true that p. The epistemic reflection of objectivity, in short, isfallibility. Heil's discussion is thus an atten1pt to defang classical scepticism by identifying it with the sort of.fallibilism that is a direct consequence of commitment to any sort of realism which carries with it such a (minimal) conception of objective truth. Our earlier discussion already shows, however, that the actual problem here lies deeper than Heil recognizes. The difficulty is not that we can find no guarantees that our efforts to arrive at objective truths will succeed. Not to ptlt too fine a point on it, the difficulty is rather that we evidently have no reason to believe that our 21
In "Philosophical Skepticism and Epistemic Circularity", Proceedings ofthe Aristotelian Society,
68(1994),pp.263-90. 22
The term is Davidson's (cf. his "The Structure and Content of Truth", Journal of Philosophy,
87 (1990), p. 305).
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actual epistemic activities have anything at all to do with such objective truths. For, as we already discovered when exploring Fogelin's views, precisely because such objective truths are ex hypothesi mind-independent, they are also "epistemically transcendent". We are unable, that is, to establish any connection between our concrete epistemic practices and the ostensible goal of coming to believe (only) such truths. We have already explored the strengths and weaknesses of Heil's strong externalist view in contrast to those of the proceduralist internalist alternative. The present point, however, is that, whatever its independent merits, when we are trying to explain how truth could be the goal of our epistemic activities, such strong externalism is simply a dead end. For, unless we can somehow ascertain which belief-forming n1ethods are reliable (correlatively, which candidate evidence, etc. is good evidence), there is no way to transform our ostensible overriding con1mitn1ent to the goal of truth into concrete epistemic policies and practices. The upshot of these reflections seems to be that, despite almost universal agreement to the contrary, objective truth simply cannot function as the goal of our epistemic activities. 23 This is not to say that there can be no explicable relationship between our concrete epistemic practices and true beliefs, but it is to suggest that the way in which that relationship has traditionally been conceived, roughly as an epistemic instantiation of the n1eans-end relationship, is fundamentally misguided. 24 The philosopher who has perhaps seen this most clearly is C. S. Peirce: 23 One commentator on an earlier draft understands me as arguing from the premise that (a) we have no way to "ascertain which belief-forming methods are reliable", to (b) "there is no way to transform our ostensible overriding commitment to the goal of truth into concrete epistemic policies and practices", and thence to the conclusion that (c) "objective truth simply cannot function as the goal of our epistemic practices". "But compare gambling", he continues. "Even if I have no way to tell which betting methods will reliably yield the most money, that does not show that money cannot be the goal of gambling." This criticisnl simply misses my point. My inability to ascertain which belief-forming methods are reliable is itself a consequence of my inability to identify any objective truths as such. The relevant fiscal analogy would be an inability to detern1ine whether a particular betting method ever yields any money at all. In fact, however, there is, of course, no problem about determining whether an individual bet made according to a particular strategy does or does not payoff; that is, whether I afterwards have more or less money. But there is no way to determine whether the outcome of a specific enquiry conducted according to a particular method is or isn't objectively true. 24 As a side-note, it also follows that one cannot sensibly literally swear, as the Anglo-American courtroom formula has it, "to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth". The best one can do is to tell what one takes to be the truth, but that, as we shall shortly see in more detail, is just to tell what one believes. What the traditional oath means, however, is quite clear: One promises to testify candidly, sincerely, and, to the best of one's abilities, as completely and comprehensively as possible, without knowingly distorting or omitting any relevant information.
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Peircean Enquiry We may fancy ... that we seek, not merely an opinion, but a true opinion. But put this fancy to the test and it proves groundless; for as soon as a firm belief is reached we are entirely satisfied, whether the belief be true or false. And it is clear that nothing out of the sphere of our knowledge can be our object, for nothing which does not affect the mind can be a motive for mental effort. The most that can be maintained is, that we seek for a belief that we shall think to be true. But we think each one of our beliefs to be true, and, indeed, it is mere tautology to say so. ("FB" v. 375)25
Peirce's observation that "nothing which does not affect the mind can be a motive for mental effort" echoes the leitmotif of our recent reflections, that nothing which cannot determine the nature and structure of our actual concrete epistemic practices can function as the goal, end, aim, or purpose of our epistemic activity. For, to say that an ostensible goal, end, aim, or purpose must be able in the relevant sense to "affect the mind" is at least to say that we must be able actually to determine from occasion to occasion whether or not that ostensible goal has in fact been reached or realized. 26 Peirce himself is notoriously a self-professed (scholastic) realist about truth. As is well known, he characterizes (matter-of-factual) truth per se in ternlS of the notion of an inevitable outcome of (scientific) enquiry: Different minds may set out with the most antagonistic views, but the progress of [scientific] investigation carries then1 by a force outside of themselves to one and the same conclusion ... The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate, is what we mean by the truth, and the object represented in this opinion is the real. ("HMIC" v. 407)27
But Peirce does not offer an argument for the de facto inevitability of such "convergence" of opinions. Indeed, he concedes that "perversity" "might even conceivably cause an arbitrary proposition to be universally accepted as 25 C. S. Peirce, "The Fixation of Belief" ("FB"), in Hartshorne and Weiss (eds.), in CPCSP, v. 358-87. 26 "The desire for money provides a motive to gamble" , writes the commentator mentioned in n. 23 above. "So why can't it be the desire for truth that provides a motive for inquiry?" He has a point. In one clear sense, a motive is whatever in fact moves someone, and there's no in-principle limit to the sorts of mental goings-on that might infact give rise to activities that we'd recognize as enquiry-a desire for money or fame or respect, an aversion to acknowledged ignorance, various species of fear, the wish not to disappoint someone else's expectations, the irritation of doubt (Peirce's own candidate), sin1ple curiosity, and so on. In this sense, a desire for objective truth might indeed motivate enquiry. But it doesn't follow that objective truth can function as the goal of enquiry, and that becomes clear when we observe that, unlike such other potential motivating desires as those for money or fame or respect, a desire for objective truth is one that we can't ever determine has been satisfied. 27 C. S. Peirce, "How to Make Our Ideas Clear" ("HMIC"), in Hartshorne and Weiss (eds.), CPCSP, v. 388-410.
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Peircean Enquiry
long as the human race should last" ("HMIC" v. 408). Nor does he undertake to argue for the in principle inevitability of epistemic convergence. Instead, he casts the inevitability of ultimate agreement in the role of a "cheerful hope" that "animates" "all the followers of science"; that is, a regulative ideal of scientific enquiry as such. But he insists that the resulting epistemic-lin1it conceptions of truth and reality still satisfy the traditional realist demand that "the opinion which would finally result from investigation does not depend on how anybody may actually think" ("HMIC" v. 408, my emphasis). This last conclusion captures what is essential for interpreting Peirce's story of epistemic convergence as a characterization of objective truth, and I have no interest in challel1ging that interpretation here. (Later, in fact, I shall, in a sense, defend it.) I do want to insist, however, that, even when objective matter-of-factual truth is understood in Peirce's own "ideal-limit" sense, it still remains "out of the sphere of our knowledge" and so "does not affect the mind" in a way that would allow it to be, in the relevant sense, a "motive for mental effort". Here too, then, arriving at the objective truth of some matter not only does not but also cannot function as the proximate aim, goal, or purpose of enquiry. 28 This, in fact, is arguably a direct consequence of Peirce's fundamental pragmatic turn. In particular, Peirce explicitly rejects the notion that epistemological concepts (e.g. "knowledge") should be analysed or understood in semantic terms (e.g. "truth"), and that semantic concepts, in turn, should be analysed or understood in ontological terms (e.g. "correspondence" with "reality" or with "the facts"). The essence of Peirce's pragmatism consists in the conviction that all our concepts-epistemological, semantic, and ontological alike-should be understood in terms of our practices and their effects onus: [The] whole function of thought is to produce habits of action ... [What] a thing means is simply what habits it involves ... What the habit is depends on when and how it causes us to act. As for the when, every stimulus to action is derived from perception; as for the how, every purpose of action is to produce some sensible result. Thus, we come down to what is ... conceivably practical, as the root of every real distinction of thought ... and there is no distinction of meaning so fine as to consist in anything but a possible difference of practice. ("HMIC" ~ 400) 28 Michael Williams offers a more radical critique of these notions: "It seems to me that we have no idea of what it would be for a theory to be ideally complete and comprehensive in the way required by [Peircean limit] accounts of truth, or of what it would be for inquiry to have an end. Nor do we need the concept of an ideal theory to make sense of the idea that knowledge progresses. We understand progress retrospectively by seeing how a later view improves over its predecessors. We do not have to rely on the notion of a perfected view towards which inquiry is progressing" ("CJT" 269).
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From this perspective, the reason that acquiring true beliefs cannot function as the proximate aim, goal, or purpose of enquiry is that one's having arrived at the truth is not the sort of "sensible result" whose recognized achievement could be the occasion for bringing an ongoing process of enquiry to a defacto end. 29 As Richard Rorty puts it: "It is not what common sense would call a goal. For it is neither something we might realize we had reached, nor something to which we might get closer" ("TGI" 39).30 It is important to appreciate that this conclusion is independent of the distinction between traditional "ontological" conceptions of objective truth, e.g. as "correspondence with the facts", and Peirce's own "epistemic-limit" characterization in terms of the inevitable ultimate outcome of enquiry. Neither "the facts" nor the "predestinate" conclusions of "inquiry carried sufficiently far" are available to us as, so to speak, concrete signs that we have achieved the immediate (local) aims of an active process of enquiry-and the same holds as well for the defining characteristic of objective truth on traditional "coherentist" conceptions; for example, "membership in a consistent and maximally coherent set of beliefs". On none of these conceptions do objective matter-of-factual truths come tagged or labelled as such, and even if, per impossible, they ostensibly did, we should still need to enquire into the accuracy, i.e. the veracity, of the label. We are, in short, always cognizant only of the results of our enquiries sofar, and only those results tell us what, to the best of our current knowledge, "the facts" are. 31 This is more or less the avowedly pragmatist picture of the relationships among justification, enquiry, and truth that Rorty extracts from the work of, inter alia, Davidson and Brandon1. He describes "Davidsonians" as rejecting the view that truth is "a desirable noncausal relation between language and nonlanguage", and holdil1g instead that 29 Compare the Reichenbachian suggestion that statistical induction aims at determining the limit frequency of a property in an infinite reference class. Even if, as Reichenbach thought he could argue, sound inductive procedures necessarily converge on the desired limit frequency "in the long run", as Carnap observed, in the long run we are all dead. Less facetiously put, Carnap's point is that such a limit frequency is not a goal which we could, even in principle, ever have reason to believe that we had attained. It consequently cannot serve to regulate inductive data-gathering procedures as their proximate aim; that is, in the sense that our achieving it can signal that we have in hand evidence sufficient to entitle us to bring a particular course of enquiry to a close. 30 "Is Truth a Goal of Inquiry?" ("TGI"), in Truth and Progress, Philosophical Papers, iii (Catnbridge and New York: Catnbridge University Press, 1998), pp. 19-42. 31 Trying to treat some "absolute" version of truth as the proximate aim of enquiry leads directly to Meno's Paradox: "How will you look for it, Socrates, when you do not know at all what it is? How will you aim to search for something you do not know at all? If you should meet with it, how will you know that this is the thing that you did not know?" (Meno, 80d).
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the arguments from the indefinite plurality of ways of going on/input-output functions/conventions of representations leave no room for any such desirable noncausal relation,
(2)
so there is no reason to think that even an infinite amount of justification would get us closer to such a relation,
(3)
so there is nothing that can plausibly be described as a goal of inquiry, although the desire for further justification, of course, serves as a motive of inquiry. ("TGI" 38)
The Peircean points that we have most recently been pressing en1erge in Rorty's discussion as the observation that there is (and can be) no distinction in practice between seeking truth and seeking justification: If I have concrete, specific doubts about whether one of my beliefs is true, I can resolve those doubts only by asking whether it is adequately justified-by finding and assessing additional reasons pro and con. I cannot bypass justification and confine my attention to truth: assessment of truth and assessment of justification are, when the question is about what I should believe now, the same activity. ("TGI" 19) The need to justify our beliefs and desires to ourselves and to our fellow agents subjects us to norms, and obedience to these norms produces a behavioral pattern that we must detect in others before confidently attributing beliefs to them. But there seen1S no occasion to look for obedience to an additional norm-the commandment to seek the truth. For ... obedience to that norm will produce no behavior not produced by the need to offer justification. ("TGI" 26)
A decade earlier, Rorty expressed essentially this conclusion as the claim that 'true' has no explanatory use. All occurrences of 'true' can be understood as manifesting either (a)
an endorsing use,
(b)
a cautionary use, in such remarks as 'Your belief that S is perfectly justified but perhaps not true'-reminding ourselves that justification is relative to, and no better than, the beliefs cited as grounds for S, and that such justification is no guarantee that things will go well if we take S as a 'rule for action' . . . [or]
(c)
a metalinguistic use: to say metalinguistic things of the form'S' is true iff - - ("PDT" 128)32
His underlying idea, he now explains, 32 "Pragmatism, Davidson, and Truth" ("PDT"), pp. 126-50, in Richard Rorty, Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
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Peircean Enquiry was that the entire force of the cautionary use of 'true' is to point out that justification is relative to an audience and that we can never exclude the possibility that some better audience might exist, or come to exist, to whom a belief that is justifiable to us would not be justifiable. But ... there is no such thing as an "ideal audience" before which justification would be sufficient to ensure truth, any more than there can be a largest integer. For any audience, one can imagine a better-informed audience and also a more imaginative one ("TGI" 22)
On the face of it, Rorty's views here harmonize with Brandom's conviction, noted earlier, that our claims to the effect that some proposition is true are expressions of our own "situated" normative (epistemic) attitudes: The official correlate in my story [in MIEJ of taking someone to have a beliefis attributing a commitmentthat is propositionally articulated in the right way to be propositionally COlltentful-that is, it is fit to serve both as a premise and as a conclusion of inferences. The official correlate of taking someone to bejustifiedin their belief is attributing entitlementto that commitment ... What about the truth condition? Taking what someone is committed to to be true is not attributing anythingto them. It is rather undertaking or endorsing that commitment oneself. The distinction between what is merely taken true, and what actually is true originates in the fundamental social distinction between attributing commitments (to others), and undertaking them (oneself). ("BSR" 202)33
But if taking someone's belief, i.e. one of his propositionally articulated commitments, to be true is nothing more than undertaking that same commitmel1t oneself, then it is tempting to conclude that what truth-ascriptions fundamentally express (i.e. make explicit) is nothing more than agreement in belief; and Rorty evidently draws just that conclusion. Brandom's remarks at least sound very like Rorty's implausibly "ironist" contention that truth is fundamentally a matter of conversational practices; that is, that there are no constraints on inquiry save conversational ones-no wholesale constraints derived from the nature of the objects, of the mind, or of language, but only those retail constraints provided by the remarIes of our fellow-inquirers (CP 165)34
On this view, it is hard to see how the claim that the goal of cognitive activity is maximizing truth (and minimizing error) could amount to anything other 33 Robert Brandom, "Replies" (to critical essays by John McDowell, Gideon Rosen, Richard Rorty, and the present author in a book symposium), Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 57 (1997), pp. 189-204. All emphases are as in the original publication. Brandom does concede, however, that" a lot of work has to be done to elaborate this basic idea in a way that will make sense of applying this distinction in one's own case, using [it] to distinguish truth conditions from mere conditions of assertibility in embedded contexts, and so on" ("BSR" 202). 34 Richard Rorty, Consequences of Pragmatism (CP) (Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota Press, 1982).
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than the thesis that our cognitive practices aim at maximizing agreement (and minimizing dissent). As is so often the case, Rorty's own convictions turn out to be much more radical than those of the philosophers whom he claims as his allies. 35 " 'True' ", he writes, "is basically just a word which applies to those beliefs upon which we are able to agree" ("SS" 44-5).36 He has, of course, no patience at all with the sort of epistemically transcendent "philosophical" truth-concept we found shaping Fogelin's and Heil's convictions: I do not have much use for notions like ... "objective truth". ("TWO" 141) There are ... two senses ... of 'true' ... the homely use of 'true' to mean roughly 'what you can defend against all comers,' ... [and] the specifically 'philosophical' sense ... which, like the Ideas of Pure Reason, [is] designed precisely to stand for the Unconditioned. (PMN308-9) Sentences like "Truth is independent of the human mind" are simply platitudes used to inculcate the common sense of the West. (CIS 76-7)37
But rather than simply endorsing some "minimalist", e.g. disquotational or prosentential, conception of truth, Rorty prefers to insist that truth is "entirely a matter of solidarity" (ORT32).38 On this view, we can in fact conceive of truth as the goal of our cognitive activities, but only at the price of identifying the truth at which we aim as consisting in our de facto agreement, and, of course, we can and sometimes do agree about all sorts of things for all sorts of reasons-what behaviour is reprehensible, what political system is desirable, what paintings are beautiful, what jokes are funny, and so on. As Susan Haack qu.ite properly points out, however, this is a prima facie bizarre stance. Indeed, she argues, what Rorty calls the hon1ely sense of 'true' is not a sense of 'true' at all. 'True' is a word we apply to statements about which we agree; but that is because, if we agree that things are thus and so, we agree that it is true that things are thus and so. But we 35 I have already twice offered some documentation for this charge: in "Philosophy's Self-Image: A Reply to Rorty", AnalyseundKritik, 4(1982), pp. 114-28, and in "Raiders of the Lost Distinction: Richard Rorty and the Search for the Last Dichotomy" , Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 53 (1993),pp. 195-214. 36 Richard Rorty, "Science as Solidarity" ("SS"), in John S. Nelson, et al. (eds.), The Rhetoric of the Human Sciences, (Madison, Wise.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987),38-52. 37 Richard Rorty, "Trotsky and Wild Orchids" ("TWO"), Common Knowledge, 1 (1992), 140-53; Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (PMN) (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979); Contingency, Irony, and Solidan'ty (CIS) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). 38 Richard Rorty, Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth (ORT) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
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Peircean Enquiry may agree that things are thus and so when it is not true that things are thus and so. So 'true' is not a word that truly applies to all or only statenlents about which we agree; and neither, of course, does calling a statement true mean that it is a statement we agree about. If calling a statement true did mean that it is a statement we agree about, to inquire-to try to arrive at the truth of some question-would be just to try to arrive at agreement with respect to that question. Inquiry would be more like a negotiation than an investigation. . . But inquiry isn't much like negotiation. Investigating the structure of DNA, Crick and Watson [for instance] ... had endless discussions with each other and with colleagues and correspondents; [and], yes, eventually, quite some time after the publication of their paper in Nature, the scientific community came to agree that their model was the right one. But the goal was to discoverthe structure ofDNA, not to overcome conversational objections or to reach consensus. (MPM 19-20)39
And Brandom evidently also has something rather different in mind: It is not up to us which clainls are true (that is, what the facts are). It is in a sense up to us which noises and marks express which claims, and hence, in a more attenuated sense, which express true claims. But empirical and practical constraint on our arbitrary whim is a pervasive feature of our discursive practice. . . The nonlinguistic facts could be largely what they are, even if our discursive practices were quite different (or absent entirely), for what claims are true does not depend on anyone's claiming of them. But our discursive practices could not be what they are if the nonlinguistic facts were different. (MIE 331)40
Peirce's own positive alternative views also deserve attention at this point, and shortly they will receive it. Before turning to them, however, we need to take a closer look at the concept of truth that we have so far largely been taking for granted. How are we to understand it? What gives this question some urgency is the fact that, as Simon Blackburn observes, it is obviously a feature of our language game with 'true' and 'false' that we pretty promiscuously call even bedrock sentences, those functioning as norms, claims of necessity, first person statements of intention and the rest, true or false. There nlay be even better things to say, but one good thing to say is that it is false (not true) that motor cars grow on trees, that I intend to take up tight-rope walking, that envy is a virtue, and 39 Susan Haack, Manifesto of aPassionate Moderate (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1998). The citation is from ch. 1, pp. 7-30, "Confessions of an Old-Fashioned Prig". Ch. 2 (pp. 31-47) is entitled" 'We Pragmatists ... ': Peirce and Rorty in Conversation". 40 Again: "What determinate practices a community has depends on what the facts are and on what objects they are actually practically involved with, to begin with, through perception and action. The way the world is, constrains proprieties of inferential, doxastic, and practical commitment in a straightforward way from within those practices" (MIE 332).
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For any "realist" philosopher who wants to insist on a principled distinction between universal (even ideal) agreement and matter-a/factual (objective) truth, then, it would be useful to have an account or al1alysis of the latter that would, at least prima facie, indicate where such a line might arguably be . drawn. We have already explored some aspects of this problematic, and in due course we will return to it. At the same time, however, Donald Davidson has argued with considerable plausibility that 'true' itself should be regarded as indefinable. More specifically, the suggestion is that there is no concept prior to truth in the order of understanding to which we might appeal in order to explicate the concept of truth itself: It is a mistake to look for a behavioristic definition, or indeed any other sort of explicit definition or outright reduction of the concept of truth. Truth is one of the clearest and most basic concepts we have, so it is fruitless to dream of eliminating it in favor of something sinlpler or more fundamental. ("SeT" 314) [We] cannot hope to underpin [the concept of truth] with something more transparent or easier to grasp. Truth is, as G. E. Moore, Bertrand Russell, and Gottlob Frege maintained, and Alfred Tarski proved, an indefinable concept. This does not mean that we can say nothing revealing about it: we can, by relating it to other concepts like belief, desire, cause, and action. ("FTD" 265)42
This is not to deny, for instance, that the extension of 'true' is adequately fixed by the collection of Tarski T-sentences, paradigmatically exemplified by 'Snow is white' is true iff snow is white. 43 41 "Wittgenstein, Wright, Rorty and Minimalism", Mind, 107 (1998), pp. 157-81. The citation is from p. 167; the embedded quotation adverts to Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, #136. Cf. Crispin Wright, Truth and Objectivity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992), p. 75: "the minimalist [view of truth] is conservative of our ordinary style of thought and talk about the comic, the revolting and the delightful, the good, and the valuable, which finds no solecism in the description of contents concerning such matters as 'true'." 42 "The Folly of Trying to Define Truth" ("FTD"), Journal of Philosophy, 93 (1996), pp. 263-78. The previous citation is from "The Structure and Content of Truth" ("SCT") Journal ofPhilosophy, 87 (1990), pp. 279-328. The view is already adumbrated in Davidson's "A Coherence Theory of Truth and Knowledge" ("CTT"), in Ernest LaPore (ed.), Truth and Interpretation: Perspectives on the Philosophy of Donald Davidson (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986), pp. 307-19. 43 Not" ... true in English". 'English' properly modifies, for instance, 'sentence': The English sentence 'Snow is white' is true iff snow is white. This is one crucial difference between our one everyday word 'true' and Tarski's many termini technici, generated by replacing 'L' in '... true in L' with a reference to a particular formalism.
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nor that we can formally define a predicate 'true in L', where L is a "formal language", i.e. a logical calculus, by appealing to "satisfaction" in the basis clause of the familiar Tarski recursion. With this much Davidson evidently concurs: Truth, as applied to utterances of sentences, shows the disquotational feature enshrined in Tarski's Convention T, and that is enough to fix its domain of application. ("CTT" 308)
But to say that truth is indefinable is to suggest, for example, that we understand what it is for an object, 0, to satisfy an open sentence, 'Fx', only by way of the elucidations: "~Fx' is true ofo" and "~Fo' is true" .44 At this point, recalling Lehrer's claim (TK 11) that our epistemic aim "is to accept that p if and only if p", we might wonder whether we could solve the problem of characterizing a genuine epistemic end of attaining truth and avoiding error precisely by taking advantage of the disquotational character of '... is true'; that is, without making use of the troublesome abstract singular terms 'truth' and 'error'. Susan Haack points in the same direction when she writes that what a genuine enquirer wants is to end up believing that the butler did it if the butler did it, that DNA is a double-helical, backbone-out macromolecule with like-with-unlike base pairs if DNA is a double-helical, backbone-out macromolecule, etc. (MPM21)
Unfortunately, as Haack herself both recognizes and en1phasizes, any impression of progress here is only an illusion; for, there is arguably no way to cash out the closing 'etc.' except by an explicit appeal to the concept of truth. Similarly, Lehrer's formulation contains an implicit sentential quantifier, and so requires a new account of how such quantifiers work: for on the objectual interpretation that final 'p' would stand in for the nan1e of a sentence, needing to be made gram.n1atically complete by the addition of a predicate, the obvious candidate being 'true'; while on the substitutional interpretation ["for all p, we shall accept that p if and only if p"] would read as ["every substitution instance of 'we shall accept that - - if and only if - - ' is true"]. (MPM22)45
44 In this connection see also Ani! Gupta, "A Critique of Deflationism", Philosophical Topics, 21 (1993), pp. 57-81. 45 This is Haack commenting on the attempt to cash out F. P. Ramsey's essentially prosententialist account of 'true' explicitly in terms of sentential quantification, but the point holds for Lehrer's formulation as well. The critical arguments are filled out in both Davidson's "FTD" and Gupta's "A Critique of Deflationism", loc cit.
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The point, briefly, is that if 'true' is indefinable, then there is no escaping the conclusion that in contexts where the term 'truth' purports to specify a cognitive-epistemic goal it is also ineliminable. Lehrer's and Haack's ren1arks may suggest, however, that we can at least relativize the idea that truth is the goal of enquiry to particular epistemic contexts. If what we are investigating is, for instance, a crime, then we want to end up believing that the butler (the cook, the gardener, the chambermaid, the chauffeur, etc.) is guilty if and only if the butler (the cook, the gardener, the chambermaid, the chauffeur, etc.) is guilty. We can summarize these remarks by saying that we want to end up believing of x that x is guilty if and only if x is guilty, and, since we are presumably always dealing with only a finite list of suspects, the implicit quantifier here can unproblematically be understood substitutionally and, indeed, expanded into an explicit truth-function of a finite number of arguments. Similarly, if what we are investigating is the structure of DNA, we want to el1d up believing that it is a single-(double-, triple-, etc.)helical macromolecule if and only if it is a single-(double-, triple-, etc.)helical macromolecule, that it is a backbone-in(-out) molecule if and only if it is a backbone-in(-out) molecule, that its bases are paired like-with-like (like-with-unlike) if and only if its bases are paired like-with-like (like-with-unlike), etc. In general, then, for any actual enquiry that is characterized by only a finite number of viable hypotheses, hI h n , we can say that we want to end up believing that hI iff hI' that h 2 iff h 2 , and that h n iff h n . In this sense, we might say that a minimalist goal of truth is immanent to any actual enquiry. This sort of minimalist enquiry-imn1anent truth-goal, however, is nothing more than a reflection of Peirce's observation that "we think each one of our beliefs to be true, and, indeed, it is mere talltology to say so"; that is, of the platitude that to believe is to believe-true. Whatever we currently believe, we hold true (whether or not, one cannot help adding, it is true). Rorty's "ironist" perspective transforms this platitude into the observation that our truth-assessments are always "Whiggish", and Brandom's account in essence treats it as an equivalence: To hold true just is to believe; that is, to llndertake oneself the justificatory commitments in which believing on his account consists. But if that is so, then the ostensible goal of immanent truth is also a goal in name only. Like the ostensible goal of epistemically transcendent objective truth, it does not exert any constraints on the actual concrete conduct of our enquiries. The only difference is that in the former case nothing could count as a reason to believe that we had reached or realized the putative goal, while in the present case nothing can count as a reason to believe that we have failed 228
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to reach or realize the putative goal. For, Peirce is surely correct: "as soon as a firm belief is reached we are entirely satisfied"; that is, enquiry infact comes to an end. The specification of a state of affairs can function as the specification of a genuine goal, end, aim, or purpose, however, only if it implies a genuine distinction between those determinate forms of conduct which can and those which cannot be shown to lead or tend to its realization. The upshot seems to be that no notion of truth, neither a transcendent notion of objective truth nor a minimalist notion of immanent truth, can play any determinative role at all in our epistemic activities, and this at least leads to the suspicion that no notion of truth will play any essential role at all in an adequate systematic epistemological theory. Indeed, if 'true' is, as Blackburn suggests, "promiscuous", and, as Davidson argues, indefinable, it begins to look as if we would do well to stop talking about truth altogether and just identify the goal of our cognitive-epistemic activities per se as justified belief; that is, just say that what we want is simply to come to have justified beliefs, full stop. This "concept-internalist" view, as we might call it, of course, is just the opposite of Beckermann's "concept-externalist" conclusion. But it is now clear that Beckermann's defence of von Kutchera's "n1inimal concept of knowledge" with which we began rests on a deeply problematic andultimately indefensible form of systematic epistemological theory. For, as we have seen, if the core of such a theory consists in providing satisfactory answers to the questions: (1)
What is the goal of our cognitive efforts?
(2)
How-by what means and procedures-can we reach that goal? (And in which areas can we reach it?)
(3)
How-with the help of what criteria-can we check whether and to what extent we have reached it? ("WWM" 39)
the quite traditional theory articulated by von Kutchera and endorsed by Beckermann according to which truth (true belief) is the overriding end and justification (justified belief) the essential means arguably will not do. Peirce's own answer to Beckermann's first question is summarized in the title of his well-known essay "The Fixation of Belief". "[Both] doubt and belief have positive effects on us, though very different ones", he writes, and he continues: Belief does not make us act at once, but puts us into such a condition that we shall behave in some certain way when the occasion arises. Doubt has not the least such active effect, but stimulates us to inquiry until it is destroyed. 229
Pei rcea n Enq ui ry The irritation of doubt is the only immediate motive for the struggle to attain belief . . . With the doubt . . . the struggle begins, and with the cessation of doubt it ends. Hence, the sole object of inquiry is the settlement of opinion. ("FB" v. 375)
The plausibility of these remarks depends to a large extent on how we are to understand Peirce's notion of doubt. Unfortunately, much of what he has to tell us about doubt is negative and exclusionary. In particular, Peirce is anxious to distance the sort of doubt that he has in mind from Cartesian methodological, hyperbolic doubt. Descartes' point of departure, he is convinced, is simply not available: We cannot begin with complete doubt. We must begin with all the prejudices which we actually have. . . These prejudices are not to be dispelled by a n1axim, for they are things which it does not occur to us can be questioned. Hence this initial scepticism will be a mere self-deception, and not real doubt. . . A person may, it is true . . . find reason to doubt what he began by believing; but in that case he doubts because he has a positive reason for it, and not on account of the Cartesian maxim. ("SCFI" v. 265)
Elsewhere Peirce calls Cartesian doubt a "make-believe", a "state of mind in which no man ... actually is" ("WPI" v. 416). On the contrary, he insists, all enquiry, including philosophical enquiry, necessarily begins in a state of mind "in which [one is] laden with an immense mass of cognition already formed, of which [one] cannot divest [oneself, even] if one would" ("WPI" v. 416). To show that doubt is possible, i.e. that one or another (or many or even most) of one's beliefs are of a sort some exen1plars of which have been and so ipso facto can be doubted, is not yet to adduce the least ground or reason for doubting any of one's present beliefs, much less actually to doubt them. "[If] pedantry has not eaten all the reality out of you," he writes, then you must recognize that "there is much that you do not doubt, in the least", and "that which you do not at all doubt, you must and do regard as ... absolute truth" ("WPI" v. 416). N ow, we must, of course, be quite careful here with the notion of "absolute truth". "Absolute truth" in this sense is by no means epistemically transcendent or incorrigible truth. What is "absolute" here is only the total absence of actual doubt. Regarding a belief as in this sense "absolutely true" is thus entirely compatible with its actual falsehood. More importantly, it is compatible with the believer herself granting that this is a real possibility and so herself distinguishing, in another sense-Peirce calls it "abstract" and "Pickwickian" ("WPI" v. 421 )-between "absolute truth" and what she does not in fact here and now doubt. Peirce himself, in short, is explicitly and self-consciously a fallibilist. That 230
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is, he subscribes to the doctrine that "people cannot attain absolute certainty concerning questions of fact" ("NSP" i. 149).46 The doctrine has a double import. On the one hand, it again requires that we distinguish the personal epistemic attitude of certitude-complete confidence or freedom from actual doubt-from a supposed (but mythical) propositional epistemic feature of certainty-incorrigibility or freedom from possible doubt. Secondly, and more importantly for our present purposes, it requires that we acknowledge that the attitude of certitude is itself context-bound and defeasible. Matter-of-factual beliefs are always settled or "fixed" only provisionally.47 Peirce explicitly acknowledges, in short, that (as both Moore and Duhem later emphasized) all enquiry is necessarily epistemically situated. We can undertake to enquire into matters about which we are epistemically irresolute only in the context of and with the aid of "an in1mense mass of cognition already formed"-other beliefs which, as Peirce puts it, we think true, provisionally "fixed" or "settled" opinions whose de facto epistemic status is not then and there in question; that is, which are not themselves occasions for doubt. But in the course of such an enquiry, as we have already noted, "a person may ... find reason to doubt what he began by believing" ("SCFI" v. 265). "[What] you cannot help believing today, you might find you thoroughly disbelieve tomorrow" ("WPI" v. 419). More particularly, a person may find "a positive reason" for such doubt; that is, something else that she has come to believe (and so thinks true) with which the original belief conflicts. Epistemically irritating doubt often begins as a crisis of failed expectations. Certitude gives way to doubt, which gives rise to further enquiry. Wilfrid Sellars was in essence expressing analogous fallibilist convictions when he wrote that our empirical knowledge is "a self-correcting enterprise which can put any claim injeopardy, although not all at once" ("EPM" #38, 170). There is nothing in what Peirce has so far said to prevent a believer from herself explicitly acknowledging such Moorean/Duhemian truisms and so, from another perspective, recognizing that what, for prima facie good and sufficient reasons, she has come to believe-and so to believe-true-mctY, for all that, yet turn out not to be sustainable in the face of future experience. The 46 From "Notes on Scientific Philosophy" ("NSP"), c.1905, repro in Hartshorne and Weiss (eds.), CPCSP, i. 126-75. 47 It is important to note that Peirce limits his fallibilist doctrine to matters of fact. He makes it clear that fallibilism neither affirms nor denies that "men cannot attain a sure knowledge of the creations of their uwn minds", including, on his view, "the system of numbers" , e.g. such conditional claims as that "if there are two persons [in a room] and each person has two eyes [then] there will be four eyes [in the room]" ("NSP" i. 149). As already remarked, the question of which of our beliefs are matter-of-factual beliefs, and why, is here still open and still on our agenda.
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epistemic attitude of certitude is entirely compatible with the recognition of the possibility of error. In this respect, theIl, a conscientious pragmatist will not regard what she believes, however firmly and free from actual doubt, as "absolutely true". This has an air of paradox about it-the Preface Paradox, to be precise-but the threat of contradiction is quite adequately defused by the explicit temporal perspectivality of the pragmatist's fallibilist concessions. There is nothing at all paradoxical in admitting that I may later discover or encounter good and sufficient grounds to revise beliefs which I now have not the least reason or inclination to call into question. It has happened before. The "sole object" of enquiry, Peirce tells us, is settled opinion or fixed belief, and belief is evidently fixed, in turn, when it is freed from "irritating" doubt. On Peirce's view, the "when" of enquiry is the "irritation" occasioned by some specific genuine doubt, and its" how" , the undertaking of procedures sufficient to remove that irritation by "fixing" or "settling" a determinate opinion. The vanishing of doubt and the cessation of its concomitant "irritation" is apparently what constitutes the recognizable "sensible result" which it is the immediate or local aim of enquiry to achieve. The conclusion lies near at hand, then, that enqujry is successful whenever it eventuates in the extinction of doubt and the onset of a firm conviction. We will, Peirce points out, regard the resultant settled opinion as true. But, as we have seen, that is only to say that, since our epistemic attitude toward the belief in question will (provisionally) have beconle one of certitude or complete confidence (freedom from actual doubt), we will subsequently be prepared to avail ourselves of it as a premise in further reasonings, including those mediated by conditionals of the fornl "If p, then it is true that p". On this interpretation, then, the goal of our epistemic activities appears to be certitude. But, as many commentators have pointed out, if doubt is merely an unpleasant psychological state, and enquiry merely whatever eliminates that state and produces conviction in its place, the account is clearly unsatisfactory. On the one hand, there will then be no principled way of excluding radical doubts in the Cartesian style, as Peirce plainly wishes to do. 48 Nothing can prevent someone from finding the thought that there seem to be no conclusive here-and-now indicators adequate to distinguish waking perception from vivid dreaming, for instance, sufficiently "irritating" to motivate just the sort of traditional epistemological reflection which has classically led to sceptical conclusions. On the other hand, uncritical and unconditional belief is 48 In conversation, Anton Koch stressed this point, and several of those that follow, with considerable vigour.
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the very hallmark of fanaticism, and techniques for inducing it range from intensive propaganda and disinformation to various forms of outright brainwashing. As Cheryl Misak puts it: The problem with Peirce's construal of the aim of inquiry (as the settlement of belief) is that it seems to suggest that an inquiry is anything that makes a hypothesis stick in an inquirer's head and a belief is anything that sticks. (TEl 59)49
Indeed, like the soma of Huxley's Brave New World, some new drug might quite effectively eliminate all sorts of "irritating" psychological states, but we should hardly want to count one's taking or administering it as engaging in or promoting enquiry. Since Peirce is no fool, then, doubt must be more than merely an unpleasant psychological state (a conclusion perhaps already suggested by his talk of doubting for "positive reasons"), enquiry more than merely any conviction-inducing process, and fixed belief or settled opinion more than mere certitude or blind epistemic confidence. As is well known, Peirce himself explicitly considers four strategies for arriving at firm beliefs-the method of tenacity, the method of authority, the a priori method, and the method of science. The first two of these are essel1tially forms of conditioning. Tenacity is a species of self-conditioning, taking as answer to a question any we may fancy, and constantly reiterating it to ourselves, dwelling on all which may conduce to that belief, and learning to turn with contempt and hatred from anything that might disturb it ("FB" v. 378)50
while authority delegates the conditioning process to an institution which shall have for its object to keep correct doctrines before the attention of the people, to reiterate them perpetually, and to teach them to the young; having at the same time power to prevent contrary doctrines from being taught, advocated, or expressed ("FB" v. 381)
Perhaps surprisingly, Peirce does not argue t11at the methods of tenacity and authority are not suitable or permissible strategies for fixing belief. Nor does he adopt Misak's ingenious suggestion that such "specious methods", as she calls them, are not strategies for fixing belief at all, because what they fix is not belief. "They might fix some other mental state, but only the method of science and reasoning can fix genuine belief" (TEl 59). Misak's argument, in Cheryl J. Misak, Truth and the End ofInquiry (TEl) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991). Pascal commends this method to unbelievers who are convinced by the reasoning of his notorious "wager". One begins by intensively acting the role of a devout believer and, in the course of time, with the development of suitable "automatic" habits of thought, speech, and action, one becomes a devout believer. 49
50
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essence, is that it is analytic of Peirce's notion of belief that genuine beliefs are sensitive to argument and experiential evidence: Beliefs are such that they resign (i) in the face of recalcitrant experience and (ii) in the face of the acknowledgement that they were fixed by a method which did not take experience into account. If they do not resign in these circumstances, they are not genuine beliefs. (TEl 61)
N ow Peirce was evidently convinced that beliefs infact "resign" in the face of recalcitrant experience; that is, that recalcitrant experience in fact normally gives rise to doubt and its concomitant irritation; but even if that were truewhich is certainly not obvious-there is no textual evidence to support Misak's contention that, on his view, a fanatically held and so experienceresistant belief is strictly speaking not a belief at all. What Peirce argues is that tenacity and authority are not effective methods of fixing belief. In particular, he suggests that they are not effective means of resolving differences of opinion. A practitioner of the method of tel1acity "will find that other men think differently from him" ("FB" v. 378), and institutional authority, however totalitarian, ultimately cannot prevent at least some individuals from seeing that "men in other countries and in other ages have held very different doctrines from those which they themselves have been brought up to believe" ("FB" v. 381). Here again Peirce apparel1tly believes that such discoveries will inevitably give rise to doubt, irritation, and enquiry; but if fixed or settled belief is mere certitude or conviction, then this is by no means obvious. The practitioner of tenacity might equally well react with some variant of extreme relativism-everyone is entitled to his own opinion; what's "true for you" need not be "true for me"-and the practitioner of authority with pity or contempt for the ignorant heathen-or even with militant and Draconian measures to see that they, too, come to know and respect the "one true faith". If fixed belief is mere certitude, in other words, Peirce's critique of the methods of tenacity and authority is not compelling. What Peirce calls the a priori method, in contrast, appears to be identical with Rorty's "ironist" picture, which we have already encountered, according to which there are no constraints on inquiry save conversational ones-no wholesale constraints derived from the nature of the objects, of the mind, or of language, but only those retail constraints provided by the remarks of our fellow inquirers (CP 165)
On the a priori method, influenced only by "the action of natural preferences" , people"conversing together and regarding matters in differel1t lights, gradually develop beliefs in harmony with natural causes" ("FB" v. 382). 234
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Even if this is, as Rorty proposes, an effective non-repressive method for reaching agreement, Peirce insists that it is not an effective method for fixing belief. "Sentinlents in their development will be very greatly determined by accidental causes", he writes, and so the a priori method "makes of inquiry something similar to the development of taste; but taste, unfortunately, is always more or less a matter of fashion" ("FB" v. 383). What Peirce suggests, in other words, is that here, contra Rorty, not even relatively stable convictions are to be expected. What I today find attractive may repel me tomorrow. And since, notoriously, degustibus non est disputandum, a fragmented relativism at the communal level seems quite as likely as even a provisional communitywide irenic Rortyan consensus. Nevertheless, besides the absence of actual doubt, one crucial aspect of Peirce's notion of fixed belief is plainly a certain stability. Fixing a belief is evidently something like fixing a photographic image so that it does not readily evanesce, fade, or change colour. Beliefs which, like fads and fashions, come and go more or less capriciously are thus the very opposite of "fixed" or "settled" opinions, however firmly, i.e. with whatever degree of certitude or conviction, they may be held when they are held. At this point it is perhaps tempting to identify fixed beliefs with stable, enduring, relatively permanent convictions, but this sense of 'fixed belief' is again unsuited for specifying a goal or end of enquiry. We can ascertain which of our beliefs have so far remained relatively stable and permanent, but not which beliefs will endure in the face of continuing discourse, experience, and enquiry. Newtonian convictions flourished for centuries, even in the face of prima facie recalcitrant experiences, before being unexpectedly overturned through Einstein's radically innovative reflections on the concepts of gravitational force, distance, and simultaneity. In sum then, although Peirce's notion of fixed belief clearly implicates both certitude and stability, if it is to serve as an end or goal of enquiry it can consist in neither. How, then, are we to understand the fixation of belief? Perhaps the comparison with the fixation of photographic images can help us here. In the course of time, even a fixed image may fade or change; so, 'fixed' here also cannot mean permanently stable or enduring. To say that the image has been fixed, theIl, can only be to say that somethillg has been done to it which conduces to its stability. It has been treated with ajixative. But what is a fixative for beliefs? The answer to that question we have already found in Plato! Recall Socrates' curious tale of the statues of Daedalus, in the Meno. If they are not "tied down", they play truant and run away. Correct opinions, he suggests, are like that:
235
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Opinions are "tied down", then, by a logos, an "account of the reason why"; that is, in our current terminology, by ajustificatory account. In short, justification is what fixes beliefs; a fixed belief just is a justified belief. Correlatively, to say that the goal or end of enquiry is fixed belief is just to say that our cognitive-episten1ic activities per se aim at justifiedbeliefs; that is, in proceduralist terms, that what we want is to con1e to have beliefs that we are in a position to justify if they are suitably challenged. On this "concept-internalist" interpretation, much of what Peirce has to say in "The Fixation of Belief" falls comfortably into place. If enquiry just is an attempt to discover what one should justifiably believe, then, as Misak puts it, "not just anything goes as a method of inquiry" (TEl 63). However effective the methods of tenacity and authority may be at producing certitude, they are no help at all when what is wanted is a justificatory accou.nt; that is, grounds or reasons for what is believed; and participants in one or another of the transient agreements that may periodically emerge from conversational exercises of the a priori n1ethod will perhaps concur about what to believe but need not have given any thought at all to whether and why anyone ought to believe it; for example, whether there is any good evidence (or any evidence at all) that supports it. 51 Peirce's positive advocacy of "the method of science" , on the other hand, is inter alia aimed at answering a question that immediately arises once we have abandoned the idea that truth is the goal of enquiry; namely, the question of what counts as justificatory support for a particular belief. For, although the traditional answers-good reasons (grounds, evidence) or a reliable etiology-are surely in some sense correct, we can no longer rest content with the received understanding of those answers; that is, that good reasons are considerations that increase the likelihood that the particular belief is true, and reliability a propensity to produce predominantly true beliefs. Peirce's 51 Widespread "urban myths" and various species of baseless "folk wisdom"-the things that "everybody knows"-are rich sources of examples of the sort of arbitrary, ungrounded agreen1ents in belief that can be expected to issue from the a priori method. Peirce himself offers as an example "the doctrine that man only acts selfishly: that is, from the consideration that acting in one way will afford him more pleasure than acting in another. This rests on no fact in the world, but it has had a wide acceptance as being the only reasonable theory" ("FB" v. 382).
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strategy is to couple his account of justificatory reasoning to a resolution of the problematic of identifying the matter-of-factual (empirical) beliefs among the innumerable judgements that we "promiscuously" call 'true'; that is, the indefinitely many convictions on which agreement might be reached. At least on the face of it, scientific enquiry is ill-suited to equip us with justificatory resources sufficient to support claims about, for instance, moral and immoral conduct or just and unjust forms of government. What Peirce in essence asks is whether there is a relatively well-defined and determinate family of beliefs with regard to which scientific enquiry arguably is justificatorily helpful; beliefs which we could thenfor that reason characterize as "matter-offactual" or "empirical". To appreciate his answer to that question, in turn, we need to take a careful look at the n1ethod of science itself as Peirce understands it. The cardinal virtue of sOllnd scientific enquiry, according to Peirce, is that it invokes a method "by which our beliefs may be determined by nothing human, but by some external permanency-by something upon which our thinking has no effect" ("FB" v. 384): Its fundamental hypothesis ... is this: There are Real things, whose characters are entirely independent of our opinions about them; those Reals affect our senses according to regular laws, and, though our sensations are as different as are our relations to the objects, yet, by taking advantage of the laws of perception, we can ascertain by reasoning how things really and truly are; and any man, if he have sufficient experience and he reason enough about it, will be led to the one True conclusion. ("FB" v. 384)
Now, this looks suspiciously like a version of precisely the sort of "metaphysical" tr,uth and realism that Peirce explicitly descries, and the appearances, alas, are not entirely deceiving. As we have already seen, the ostensible hypothesis that "sufficient" experience and" enough" reasoning will lead "any man" to the "one True conclusion" is, by Peirce's own pragmatist lights, simply empty. Even if there is, in some sense, "one True conclusion", nothing can count as a reason to believe that our experience has (finally) been "sufficient" or that we have (at last) reasoned "enough" to be warrantedly confident that we have arrived at it. This "fundamental hypothesis" of the method of science, in other words, cannot fall within the scope of that method. It is not a hypothesis that scientific enquiry could, even in principle, confirm or disconfirm. Not surprisingly, Peirce is sensitive to the problem here, and so he explicitly rejects that interpretation of his remarks: "If this hypothesis is the sole 237
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support of my method of inquiry, my method of inquiry nlust not be used to support my hypothesis" ("FB" v. 384)52 But what sort of hypothesis is it, then, and what can and does support it? I have already proposed that Peirce's talk of the "cheerful hope" of episternic convergence that "animates" "all the followers of science" is best regarded as expressing a regulative ideal of scientific enquiry. I want now to explore the idea that what he refers to as the "hypothesis" that "there are Real things, whose characters are entirely independent of our opinions about them, [that] affect our senses according to regular laws" plays an analogous methodological, but ultimately constitutive, role with respect to such enquiry. Indeed, Peirce himself seems to suggest that a certain sort of minimal "realism" is a constitutive presupposition of enquiry per see He is not as clear and explicit about this matter as he might be, but one observation that he does offer is potentially helpful: The feeling which gives rise to any method of fixing belief is a dissatisfaction at two repugnant propositions. But here already is a vague concession that there is some one thing which a proposition should represent. Nobody, therefore, can really doubt that there are Reals, for, if he did, doubt would not be a source of dissatisfaction. The hypothesis, therefore, is one which every mind admits. ("FB" V. 384)
Now, it is clearly difficult to find anything hypothetical about an "hypothesis" that "every mind admits" and "nobody ... can really doubt". The suggestion is rather that what Peirce calls the "hypothesis that there are Reals" is what Kant might call a transcendental condition of the very possibility of doubt as Peirce understands it. This, of course, brings us back to the question of just how Peirce does understand doubt, and it is thus gratifying to notice that the present citation finally takes us beyond the merely psychological notion of "irritation" . Doubt is here thematized, not as "irritation" perse, but as a source of the "dissatisfaction" that motivates enquiry. The sort of doubt 52 The alternative "bootstrapping" view is a paradigm of what Rorty calls 'Whiggishness'. My colleague Bill Lycan, in contrast, objects that Peirce's method of enquiry "had better support his hypothesis. The circularity doesn't matter, so long as belief does in fact get fixed", and, in a certain sense, I agree with him completely. Indeed, I would argue that explanatory closure, the ability of its method to explain not only its own general success but also its own temporary and localized failures, is itself a regulative ideal of scientific enquiry. Such explanatory abilities, indeed, are essential preconditions of such enquiry's being, as Peirce observes, a selfcorrecting enterprise: "[The] test of whether I am truly following the method is not an immediate appeal to my feelings and purposes, but, on the contrary, itself involves application of the method" ("FB" v. 385). But what Peirce here disallows is that the "hypothesis" of Reals be regarded as a genuine and purely scientific hypothesis and, at the same time, as the sole support of the (only) method of enquiry subsequently used to support it; and that implicit circularity is, I think, more troublesome.
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that gives rise to enquiry, Peirce tells us here, is fundamentally a matter of "dissatisfaction at two repugnant propositions". What sort of situation does he have in mind? Beliefs can become unsettled in different ways. Consider, for example, Lewis Carroll's poem "Jabberwocky": 'Twas brillig, and the mimsy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: All slithy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe.
That's not correct. Anyone who's read Through the Looking Glass knows that it's the borogoves who were mimsy and the toves who were slithy, not the other way around. So, to say that the toves were mimsy and the borogoves slithy is to say something incorrect. But is it also to say somethingfalse? It is undoubtedly correct to say that (BT)
The borogoves were mimsy and the toves slithy,
but do we also want to say that what we can thus correctly say is therefore true? "Realist" philosophers who want to identify a distinct family of empirical or matter-of-factual claims would typically be reluctant to say this; or, at least, to say it unqualifiedly. They are generally inclined to reserve 'true' for the correctness of matter-of-factual clain1s, and would consequently regard calling (BT) true as one of those "promiscuous" uses of the term. Some of them might be willing to say, for instance, that it is true according to "Jabberwocky that the borogoves were mimsy and the toves slithy-i.e. true according to a text-but they would typically not be prepared to go on to conclude on that basis that it is true, full stop. From this "realist" perspective, then, 'true according to "Jabberwocky" , does not mean 'true, because so represented in "Jabberwocky" '; for, that would indeed imply 'true' , full stop. Correlatively, truth according to a text is not a species of truth, as isosceles triangularity, for example, is a species of triangularity. But truth according to a text is also not, like "approximate truth", a species of falsehood. It is a species of correctness, and so surely has something to do with the sorts of claims that such philosophers do regard as (potentially) qualified to be true, full stop; that is, empirical or matter-of-factual claims. The most straightforward strategy, then, is surely to conclude that to say that (BT) is true according to "Jabberwocky" is to say that it's true that: according to 'Jabberwocky", the borogoves were mimsy and the toves slithy-i.e. that (BT) is what the text of "Jabberwocky" says-and to regard jJ
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the latter as an empirical, matter-of-factual claim. 53 Matter-of-factual truth is thus, on this account, prior to the sort of correctness characteristic of (BT), to "truth according to a text" . In the course of our examination of G. E. Moore's anti-sceptical strategies we had occasion to consider an argument for the conclusion that matter-offactual truth is also prior to the sort of correctness characteristic of warranted mathematical claims; that is, to mathematical truth. The gist of the argument was that the notion of mathematical truth essentially depends upon the notion of mathematical proof, and that whether some candidate (diagram, reasoning, sequence of inscriptions, etc.) counts as an acceptable proof of some mathematical claim is determined by checking it against appropriate public norms of correctness. The requirement that proper demonstrations be effective procedures, that is, implies that determining whether a specific sequence of expressions is or is not a correct proof of a specific theorem or metatheorem (or a corresponding demonstration of unprovability) always presupposes an empirical investigation whose outcome is a matter of fact. This is not to say that the mathematical norn1S themselves (or, indeed, any norms at all) can be reduced to or analysed entirely in terms of such matters of fact. The point is epistemological: Establishing that a norm has or has not been satisfied or fulfilled always requires establishing one or more matters of fact. In general, 'ought's can't be reduced to 'is's, but determining whether someone did what he ought to have done plainly requires determining what he infact did or didn't do. While we have by no means exhaustively botanized the field of possible claims that might "promiscuously" be called 'true', or even examined a significant subset of the many different species that might be identified by a plausible taxonon1Y, the cases we have just been examining at least suggest that a "realist" philosopher will be inclined to-and, at least frequently, able to-argue that the possibility of fixing any belief requires and rests on the possibility of fixing empirical beliefs; that is, beliefs about matters of fact. And that brings us around again to the question of which beliefs those are, and how we are to recognize them. Peirce's answer is straightforward. Not to put too fine a point on it, what makes a belief empirical or matter-of-factual is the particular way in which it is connected to perception. It is consequently precisely in perceptual experience 53 Correlatively, what everyone who's read the poenl "Jabberwocky" in Through the Looking Glass strictly speaking knows is not that the borogoves were mimsy and the toves slithy, but just that that's what the text says. The traditional inference from "S knows that p" to "It is true that p", in other words, also need not commit us to "It is true that the borogoves were mimsy and the toves slithy" .
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that Peirce locates the fundamental nexus of what makes for (literal, "nonpromiscuous" ascriptions of) truth and falsehood: [A] false proposition is a proposition of which some interpretant54 represents that, on an occasion which it indicates, a percept will have a certain character, while the immediate perceptual judgment on that occasion is that the percept has not that character. A true proposition is a proposition belief in vvhich would never lead to such disappointment so long as the proposition is not understood otherwise than it was intended. (v. 569)
The first thing that needs to be said here is that, despite appearances, Peirce does not intend absolutely to privilege "immediate perceptual judgments". They can trump provisionally fixed beliefs which, on a given occasion, have led one to expect quite different perceptual experiences, but they do not always and necessarily do so. The characteristic n1ark of perceptual judgements is that we find ourselves with then1, in consequence of which they possess a certain prima-facie, but still entirely defeasible, epistemic authority: All that I can mean by a perceptual judgment is ajudgment absolutely forced upon my acceptance, and that by a process which I am utterly unable to control and consequently unable to criticize. (v. 157)55
It is easy to misunderstand this remark as well. The only sense in which I am "unable to criticize" an immediate perceptual judgment is that I do not initially come to accept it as a result of a conscious critical process of weighing reasons for and against doing so. Its immediacy, indeed, consists precisely in this non-derivative and non-procedural character, and so, in such cases, critical assessment unavoidably occurs post facto. But Peirce's fallibilism embraces these cases as well, and there is nothing in the logic of the matter to prevent a subsequent assessment from leading one to abandon such an immediate perceptual conviction. A perceptual judgement is "an act of insight, although of extremely fallible insight" (v. 181). Despite their non-procedural immediacy, perceptual judgements always "involve general elements" (v. 157) and are "interpretive" (v. 184); that is, are 54 "A sign, or representamen, is something which stands to somebody for something in some respect or capacity. It addresses somebody, that is, creates in the mind of that person an equivalent sign, or perhaps a more developed sign. The sign which it creates I call the interpretant of the first sign. The sign stands for something, its object. It stands for that object, not in all respects, but in reference to a sort of idea, which I have sometimes called the ground of the representamen" (ii. 228). (From ch. 2, "The Division of Signs", of Peirce's 1897 Elements of Logic, repro as vol. ii of Hartshorne and Weiss (eds.), CPCSP). 55 From lecture 6, "Three Types of Reasoning", of Peirce's 1903 series of lectures on Pragmatism, in CPCSPV. 157 ff.
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caught up in a network of inferential relationships to other beliefs. Like Kant, and for essentially the same reasons, Peirce is no advocate of perceptual givenness on the model of Cartesian incorrigibility: "We have no power of Intuition, but every cognition is determined logically by previous cognitions ... We have no power of thinking without signs" ("SCFI" v. 265). Although he typically articulates it rather differently-in terms of "Firstness" , "Secondness", and "Thirdness"-Peirce, in fact, subscribes to Kant's Z weistiimmigkeitslehre: If the receptivity of our mind, its power of receiving representations in so far as it is in any wise affected, is to be entitled sensibility, then the mind's power of producing representations from itself, the spontaneity of cognitions, should be called the understanding . . . To neither of these powers may a preference be given over the other. Without sensibility no object would be given to us, without understanding no object would be thought. Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind. (Critique ofPure Reason, ASI =B7S)
On Peirce's view, the epistemological role of a perceptual judgement is entirely akin to that of what he calls abductive reasoning; that is, the adopting of explanatory hypotheses: Abductive inference shades into perceptual judgment without any sharp line of demarcation between them; or, in other words, our first premisses, the perceptual judgments, are to be regarded as an extreme case of abductive inferences (v. 181)
To put the point somewhat paradoxically, a spontaneous perceptual judgement already expresses a first attempt to account for its own occurrence by incorporating an explanatory belief regarding its origins; that is, a hypothesis regarding the character of the item which, qua stimulus, has (causally) evoked it. The principal difference is not logical or epistemological but rather procedural, namely, that, in the perceptual case, the abductive process is "not controllable and therefore not fully conscious". 56 The sort of "dissatisfaction at two repugnant propositions" which gives rise to scientific enquiry is the sort of dissonance between expectation and experience characteristic of the fundamental nexus of falsehood: "a proposition of which some interpretant represents that, on an occasion which it indicates, a 56 Earlier we saw that Sellars proposes to interpret first-person judgements to the effect that one is perceiving (seeing, hearing, etc.) such-and-such as explicitly reporting the occurrence of a perceptual experience and implicitly expressing a n1ultileve1 explanatory story about it. Peirce's thesis here is complementary to that view, but more radical. The spontaneous perceptual judgement that suchand-such itself-which we might say explicitly reports (correctly or incorrectly) that such-andsuch-already implicitly expresses such an explanatory story.
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percept will have a certain character, while the immediate perceptual judgment on that occasion is that the percept has not that character" (v. 569). The method of enquiry to which it gives rise, then, will aim in the first instance at eliminating such dissonance, and that, Peirce argues, is precisely the goal of abductive reasoning per se: What ... is the end of an explanatory hypothesis? Its end is, through subjection to the test of experiment, to lead to the avoidance of all surprise and to the establishment of a habit of positive expectation that shall not be disappointed. Any hypothesis, therefore, may be admissible, in the absence of any special reasons to the contrary, provided it be capable of experimental verification, and only in so far as it is capable of such verification. That is approximately the doctrine of pragmatism. (v. 197)
For an explanatory hypothesis to be "capable of experimental verification" is for it to be what we would nowadays call (dis- )confirmable; that is, in Peirce's own words, "a ligament of nllmberless possible predictions concerning future experience, so that if they fail, it fails" (v. 597). It is, that is, for the hypothesis to have among its consequences expectations of just that sort which can and do directly confront the immediate judgements of perceptual experience. The method of science is thus fundamentally abductive. Its basic commitment is to the proximate goal of explanatorily accommodating such perceptual experiences as we infact have (i.e. with which we in fact find ourselves)-more precisely, such perceptual experiences as anyone can put himself into a position to in fact have, since properly scientific observations and experiments must be both impersonally specifiable and repeatable. That is what makes it a method "by which our beliefs may be determined by nothing human, but by . . . something upon which our thinking has no effect" ("FB" v. 384). In practice, then, what Peirce calls the "fundamental hypothesis" of the method of science, that "there are Real things, whose characters are entirely independent of our opinions about them" corresponds to the methodological injunction to strive for a stable explanatory accommodation of perceptual experiences which lie outside the scope of our deliberative choices. As he correctly notices, one sort of "realism" is built into the very notion of such an explanation: What immediate perceptual experience tells us, so to speak, is how things seem or appear, and the basic form of an explanation of such appearances is precisely to (re)characterize them as manifestations of an "underlying reality" that gives rise to them. The relevant explanatory 'because', in short, is one which conceptually connects the "ontological" 243
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categories of "appearance" and "reality": Things seem as they do because things are as they are. 57 Analogously, the hypothesis that "those Reals affect our senses according to regular laws, and ... by taking advantage of the laws of perception, we can ascertain by reasoning how things really and truly are" corresponds to the fact that any such explanatory accommodation will ultimately need to incorporate a correlative account of the perceiver (as well as any mediating instruments) and of those specific relationships between the perceiver and the posited perceived "Reals" by virtue of which the latter appear to the former as they in fact do (e.g. why a straight oar in the water looks bent, or why a swarm of oddly propertied imperceptible particles exhibits the phenomenology of a solid, liquid, or gas). Our most recent challenge, we recall, was to characterize a notion of justificatory support, i.e. of good reasons and reliable proced'ures, in pragmatic terms, without explicit recourse to a prior, practice-independent notion of truth-conducive considerations or predominantly truth-yielding beliefforming processes. Peirce's strategy is to direct our attention in the first instance to the specific practice of accommodating the perceptual experiences with which we find ourselves by advancing confirmable explanatory hypotheses regarding their origins; a practice, 11e suggests, which is already implicit in the very making of perceptual judgements as such and one whose proximate conditions of success can be characterized without invoking any prior and independent substantial notion of truth. 58 Among such immediate perceptual experiences we find some that are dissonant; that is, contrary to prior perceptual expectations. Such dissonance gives rise to the most fundamental form of doubt, and the abductive reasoning by which these experiences too are (ultimately) explanatorily accommodated (whether as veridical or mere appearances) is correlatively the most fundamental means for eliminating such doubt and so of fixing, i.e. justifying, belief. Beliefs fixed in this way are for that reason matter-of-factual beliefs, and the abductive 57 Granted, Peirce doesn't say this in just so many words, but he ought to. It is at least implicit in tying the notion of an explanatory hypothesis to the constitutive posit of Reals. That explanatory accounts which "save the appearances" have ontological import has been a recurring theme of my own work, and I have elsewhere explored its implications, in particular for the question of theory succession, in considerable detail, e.g. in "Coupling, Retheoretization, and the Correspondence Principle", Synthese, 45 (1980), pp. 351-85, and "Comparing the Incommensurable: Another Look at Convergent Realism", Philosophical Studies, 54 (1988), pp. 163-93. 58 'Substantial' here in contrast to 'formal' . As we have already remarked, there is nothing problematic about the function of 'true' in an account of truth-functions or Tarski-style formal semantics.
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method of belief-fixing is correlatively the basic form of the method of science. It is important to notice that, on the Peircean account, explanatory hypotheses introduced to alleviate dissonance between prior perceptual expectations and present perceptual experiences must then1selves generate further perceptual expectations; that is, carry specific (conditional) implications regarding indefinitely many possible future perceptual experiences. The abductive n1ethod of science is thus essentially open-ended, and so, although its conditions of synchronic success can be completely expressed in terms of "doubt and belief and the course of experience"59 up to and including a given time, the correlative diachronic conception can function only as a regulative ideal. 60 Peirce thus offers us the rudiments of a systematic epistemological theory, but one significantly different from the received tradition. To Beckermann's first question, "What is the goal of our cognitive efforts?", he answers not "true belief" but "fixed, i.e. justified, belief". To the second question, "By what means and procedures and in what areas can we reach that goal?", he answers, at least in the first instance, "by the (abductive) method of science, with respect to such matter-of-factual (empirical) questions which fall within its scope". And to the third question, "How can we check whether and to what extent we have reached it?", he answers, again in the first instance, "by continuously submitting our (provisionally fixed) beliefs to the test of experience". This is not to say that there is no place in Peirce's systematic story for talk about truth. Indeed, as we have seen, it has room for two different kinds of talk about truth. On the one hand, there is synchronic discourse in medias res, where what is at issue is what I earlier called the notion of truth immanent to any actual enquiry. What holds centre stage here is the insight that "we think each one of our beliefs to be true, and, indeed, it is mere tautology to say so"; that is, that to believe is to believe-true. In such contexts, it will be difficult to distinguish a Peircean pragmatist from various sorts of self-professed "minimalists" about truth. Here is the natural home of the predicate 'is true', and 59 "All you have any dealings with are your doubts and beliefs, with the course of life that forces new beliefs upon you and gives you power to doubt old beliefs. If your terms 'truth' and 'falsity' are taken in such senses as to be definable in terms of doubt and belief and the course of experience ... well and good ... But if by truth and falsity you mean something not definable in terms of doubt and belief in any way, then you are talking of entities of whose existence you can know nothing, and which Ockhan1's razor would clean shave off" ("WPI" v. 416). 60 "A theory which should be capable of being absolutely demonstrated in its entirety by future events, would be no scientific theory but a mere piece of fortune-telling. On the other hand, a theory which goes beyond what may be verified to any degree of approximation by future discoveries is, in so far, metaphysical gabble" ("WPI" v. 541).
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its fundamental roles are, broadly speaking, abbreviatory and "prosentential". It is consequently also largely dispensable in familiar ways.61 On the other hand, there is a diachronic mode of discourse that prescinds from our defacto temporal and epistemic situation to explore the nature and consequences of various procedllres for belief formation al1d belief revision across tin1e. What holds centre stage here is the Peircean pragmatist's root conviction that the "whole function of thought is to produce habits of action" and his consequent ·commitment to understanding our epistemological, sen1antic, and ontological concepts alike in terms of our concrete practices and their sensible effects. In Peirce's own texts, we here more frequently find the abstract singular tern1S 'truth' and 'reality', quite often writ suspiciously large, and a good bit of sympathetic exegesis is often required. The fundamental exegetical strategy, as we have seen, is to transpose such remarks into procedural accounts of the conduct of enquiry in a way that brings out their role as expressions of constitutive or regulative n1ethodological pril1ciples, constrail1ts, and ideals in terms of which such epistemic activities are concretely structured and appraised. Peirce's "limit-conception" talk of truth belongs to the second sort of discourse. Transposed into the procedural idiom, it reflects the observation that increased explanatory coherence is the cardinal virtue of an abductive hypothesis. The availability of two prin1a facie equally justifiable but mutually incompatible empirical hypotheses or theories would consequently be simply a cognitively more elaborate version of the original doubt-inducing dissonance between "two repugl1ant propositions" at the perceptual level, and so equally a source of the sort of "dissatisfaction" that occasions (further) enquiry. Methodologically speaking, it is an indication that scientific enquiry needs to continue; for it would precisely place a new question on the agenda: How can we explain the (surprising) fact that two mutually incompatible empirical hypotheses or theories are prima facie equally justifiable? Since they have been, in the manner we have explored, "determined ... by something upon which Ollr thinking has no effect", the beliefs successively 61 I write "largely dispensable", in part because nlY colleague Keith Simmons has argued that deflationary conceptions of truth in general are severely compromised by the Liar Paradox and various of its kin. In particular, the usual ways of coming to terms with the Liar prove to be incompatible with familiar "disquotationalist" strategies for eliminating the truth predicate ("Deflationary Truth and the Liar", Journal of Philosophical Logic, 28 (1999), pp. 455-88). I've not researched what Peirce himself had to say on such matters, but I do not think that a Peircean pragmatist of the sort whose views I have been elucidating needs to be terribly troubled by such aberrant cases. I've had a bit more to say on the import of logical paradoxes in "Logical Analysis in Epistemological Perspective", ch. 7 of Beyond Formalism.
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"fixed" by successful applications of the method of science are the obvious candidates for the title of objective truths. The epistemic marks of objectivity are fallibility and intersubjectivity. The fornler is guaranteed, on Peirce's account, by the essential open-endedness of scientific enquiry; the latter by the impersonality and repeatability of scientific observations and experiments. These are both more than merely "conversational" constraints in Rorty's sense, and more than sufficient to support Haack's and Brandom's contra-Rortyan convictions that "inquiry isn't much like negotiation" and "our discursive practices could not be what they are if the nonlinguistic facts were different" .62 Interpreted as the project of constructing an understandable and defensible answer to Beckermann's three questions, systematic epistemological enquiry itself also belongs to this second, diachronic mode of discourse. It is an exploration of the nature, possibility, and limits of knowledge that abstracts from the defacto details of our present temporal and epistemic situation. In one clear sense, theIl, it is, ill Stroud's ternlS, both "detached" and "general" . But the Peircean-pragmatist systematic epistemology that we have most recently been elucidating offers no aid and comfort to Stroud's own philosophical inclinations. For, while it abstracts from the details of our present temporal and epistemic situation, it at the same time acknowledges our inescapable temporal and epistemic situatedness, and so consistently remains both procedural and perspectival in a way that, as Peirce himself insisted, precludes the possibility of all-encompassing hyperbolic doubt in the Cartesian style. And that brings us once more to the resolute anti-scepticism that was my original point of departure and has accompanied me throughout this epistemological journey. The fallibilist, proceduralist, and perspectivalist theses that I have had occasion to formulate and defend along the way we have 62 Brandom again: "Concern with getting things right is built into any practices that generate disposition-transcendent conceptual norms, and on my account that is all autonomous languages whatsoever" ("BSR" 204). It's not exactly clear what Brandom means by 'autonomous' here, but something along the lines of what I've suggested is the conceptual priority of empirical, matter-of-factual discourse is perhaps one thing that it might mean. Matter-of-fact-stating, "descriptive" discourse correlative to the method of science, that is, would be "autonomous" in a way that, for example, fictional, mathematical, and normative discourses are not. At least some of what Brandom says seems sympathetic to this interpretation: "Orders, for instance, are specifically linguistic and distinguished from mere signals by indicating what one ought to do by saying what one ought to do: describing what would count as doing it. Something can have that significance only in the context of practices that permit one to say that things are thus and so. The talk cannot be, say, irony all the way down, any more than it can be alliteration all the way down" ("BSR" 203-4).
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now also found systematically adumbrated in Peirce's pioneering work. The positive philosophical theory of knowledge and justification here advocated thus proves to be a thoroughly pragmatist account in the original Peircean sense of the term. And since one could hardly hope for a better intellectual pedigree, that is also a satisfying note on which to bring the present study to a close.
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Index Abnis 69-71,81 abduction 242-6 acceptance (vs. belief) 208-12 aeroplane-spotters 149-57 Alston, William 83-4,97-9,101-6,109, 111-22,134-6,206,208,212 amnemnesis 16-17 appearing 18; see also looks, seems apperception 61-71,77,79-81 Austin, J. L. 197 barns, Potemkin 139-41,148 Beckermann, Ansgar 202-5,207,213-14, 229,245,247 Berkeley, George 35-6 Blackburn, Simon 225, 229 Bonjour, Laurence 205 bookkeeping, see epistemic bookkeeping brain in a vat 46,51-9, 159 Brandom, Robert 107-8,120,122,127, 168,221,223,225,228,247 Brueckner, Anthony 44-7, 51 certainty 13,31-2,34,40,60,66,77,100, 105,169,178,192-5,198,209,216, 231 certitude 12-14,34,63,71,76-7,82,125, 128,130,133-4,192-5,231-6 changelings 42-3 Clarke, D. S. , Jr. 209-12 Clarke, Thompson 149 closure principles 45-59 cogito 61-6,70; see also "I think" common sense 119,173,190-2,194-5, 221,224 community of enquiry 187-8, 196, 198 concept externalisn1 123-5, 128, 130, 135, 202-3,205,229; see also externalism concept internalism 205,229,236; see also internalism context-dependence 141
context of enquiry 143-4,146,151-5, 158, 160-1,167,169,198; see also epistemic context, epistemic perspective, informational state contextualism 161-4 contingency 20,31,185-6,199 Davidson, Donald 221,226-7,229 defeators 159,161,166-7,169 demons 41, 66 DeRose, Keith 162-4 Descartes, Rene 9-49,60-69,77-8, 100, 199 and passim detachment 45,154-6,161,167-70,174, 195-6,199,201,247 doubt 9-59, 130, 158-9, 161,230-5,238 and passim exaggerated 14,22-3,30-1,34,37,39, 158,230,247 Duhem, Pierre 231 episten1ic attitudes 12-14,34,65,71,76-7, 81-2, 125, 127, 130, 133-4, 192, 231-2 epistemic authority 107-10,116,184-5, 198,241 epistemic bookkeeping 152, 188, 196-8 epistemic context 148, 152-3, 156, 159, 175,184,190-1,193,198,212,228; see also context of enquiry, epistemic perspective, informational state epistemic perspective 141, 146, 149-56, 158, 160, 163-4, 167-9, 188 epistemic possibility 31-3, 186-8 epistemic responsibility 114-15, 188 epistemic solipsism 105, 109 epistemics 188-90,196-9,201 epistemization 102-6, 109, 112, 114, 120-2 epoche 13,60-71,81-3,85-6,88-90,93, 97, 100, 133
255
Index expressing (vs. reporting) 72-8,82,86-8 externalism 124-5,131,134-5, 140,214-6, 218 fallibilism 99,136,217,230-2,241,247; see also infallibility fixed belief 12,130,230-6,238,240-1, 244-5,247 Fogelin, Robert 42-3,134-41,147,150, 153,157-61,164-70,218,224 formalist paradigm 11-12, 17-18, 42, 178, 199 foundations 10-12,15,23,29,34,42,60, 105-6,131,170 Frege, Gottlob 73,226 Galilei, Galileo 11, 15 Gettierproblems 136-41,148-53,166, 169 Ginet, Carl 139 goal of enquiry 196,203-9,212-13,216, 218-25,227-30,232-3,235-6,243, 245 Grice, H. P. 147 Haack, Susan 148,205,224,227-8, 247 hallucination 50-1 Heil, John 215-8,224 Hume, David 36,67, 171 Husserl, Edmund 70 hyperbolic doubt, see doubt, exaggerated "I think" 61-71,75-82 immediate knowledge 101-22 passim infallibility 63-4,66,71,83-7,93,97, 99-100, 105, 167, 199; see also fallibilism informational state 138, 141, 145-6, 148, 150,152,156-8,166, 169, 175; see also epistemic context innersense 66-7,69,71,78-81,92-3, 97-100,133 internalism 104,109,111-13,115-16,118, 120,122,130,133-6,171,205,213, 216,218,229,236 Jabberwocky 239
256
justification passim deontological vs. evaluative 114-17, 134-5,149,208 primary vs. deferred 143 justified true belief (JTB) 84, 102, 132-8, 166,203-5 Kant, Immanuel 42,61-4,66-9,71,77-82, 95,177,238,242 Kepler, Johannes 11, 15 Koch, Anton Friedrich 60-6,70,81,83-4 Lehrer, Keith 126,208,210,277-8 level ascent argument 106, 111, 118, 122; see also trans-level credibility Lewis, David 161,167,170 logical space of reasons 104, 107, 113, 120, 130 looks 89-100, 133; see also seems mathematics 11-12,15-17,35-6,144, 199-201,240 ~eno 16-7,130,235 ~ichaels, Fred 157 ~isak, Cheryl 233-4, 236 ~onique 107-8, 127-9 Moore, George Edward 6-7,43,46,52-4, 77,171,172-201,226,231,240 ~oore's paradox 77 ~oser, Paul 205 ~yth of the Given 106 Nagel, Thomas 156 Newton, Isaac 11 normativity 75-6,80, 101,107,114-15, 117,120-2,130,132-4,152,168, 188,194,210-11,223 norms 116,143-4,147,149,201,222,225, 240 objective truth 61-5,69-71,81-3,85-7, 133,153-5,168-71,217-21,224, 226,228-9,247 observational knowledge 107-11,116,129, 131 onus probandi 173, 180 papier-mache 159, 169
Index Peirce, Charles Saunders 12, 14,42-3,88, 130,218-22,225,228-48 perception Cartesian theses 18-30,35-7 Peircean theses 240--44 Sellarsian theses 107-11, 116-18 perspectivalism 148, 152-3, 156, 162-4, 166-9,186-7,193-4,197,199,247; see also contextualism, epistemic perspective Plato 16,130,132,153,235 practical syllogism 206-8,213 pragmatism 42,220-1,232,237,243, 245-8 proceduralism 104, 106, 112-14, 117-18, 120,211-13,218,236,248 proof mathematical 201, 240 of an external world, G. E. Moore's 176-85,191,197-8 pumpkins 21,24 REF processes, see reliable belief-forming processes RDRD, see reliable differential response dispositions reliabilisnl 102, 107, 109, 135; see also externalism reliability 22,26,28, 102-3, 106, 115, 117, 124-9,131,214,236 reliable belief-forming processes 102-3, 107,109,112,124-5,203,214-5 reliable differential response disposition 107, 109 Rorty, Richard 221--4,228,234,247 rules 115-1 7 Russell, Bertrand 183,191,195,226 Ryle, Gilbert 91 Sartwell, Crispin 123-5,204-5 science 11-12, 15, 17,20, 119, 143,219-20, 233,236-8,242-3,245-7 scorekeeping 168; see also bookkeeping scrutiny, level of 140-51, 153, 158-60, 163-5, 167, 169 seenlS 69-71,81-3,85-9, 133; see also looks
self-warranting beliefs 97-9 Sellars, Wilfrid 72-5,87,89-97,104-13, 115-22,129-31,207,212-13,231 sensations 17,82-3,87-92,94-6, 121, 181, 237 senses, the 11,15-20,23,25,29,34,48,60 sensory experience 11,17,27,42,54-5,57, 59, 170; see also perception shall 85-6 Sherlock Holmes 146-7,157 skeptical possibilities 37-8,41-3,51-2, 54-9,150,158-9,167,169; see also doubt, exaggerated Socrates 16-7, 285 Sosa, Ernest 126,132, 153,217 spontaneous beliefs 19,21,31,33-4,39, 54,110-11,126-7,129,131,242 Strawson, P. F. 181-2 Stroud, Barry 43-53,59,149-58,160-1, 164,170,172-80,183,187,189-92, 194-6,199,201,247 subjectivity 61-3,70-1,75,77,81-3,87-8, 90,93,99-100,170 Tarski, Alfred 226-7 thought-episodes 66,69,71-5,78-83, 87-8,90,96-9,107 trans-level credibility 110, 116, 118, 122, 129, 131; see also level ascent argument transmission of knowledge 142, 152, 156, 158, 184 Truetemp 126-9 Trusting Sue 126-8 truth 219-29, 239-40; see also goal of enquiry, objective truth truth-conduciveness 84, 244; see also reliability voluntarism 114-17,207-13 von Kutschera, Franz 123-5, 202-3 Williams, Michael 155-6,161,170-1,194 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 95,165,191 zebras 163-4
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