Theory of Knowledge
Fall 2006
Ordinary Standards Skepticism
Ordinary standards skeptics ask what basis we have for claiming that our reasons for our ordinary beliefs are all that good (even if fallible). After all, they might say, things might seem just as they do if you were a BIV, dreaming, a victim of an evil god, etc. So, why believe the common sense view - that there are ordinary objects - when there are these alternative hypotheses? That seems like a legitimate question. What answer can we give? This line of thought is summarized in the Alternative Hypotheses Argument, p. 142.
Note well: suppose that the response to the puzzle about induction is right. That tells us that if we know that things have been a certain way in the past, then we have good reason to believe that they will be that way in the future. This argument, in effect, denies that we have the knowledge need to serve as the basis of our inductive reasoning.
Anti-skeptical responses to this valid argument fall into 2 categories. Some say that we don’t need a reason or evidence to prefer the common sense view - it somehow is to be preferred independently of evidence. These folks would reject (7-2) of the argument. Others say that our evidence really does favor the common sense view. They reject (7-1) of the argument.
I ignore here the Moorean (dogmatic) response: we do have knowledge, so something is wrong with the argument. That might be right, but it isn’t very helpful here. Perhaps it is of more value if your concern is more rhetorical or dialectical. If you want to know what to think about the argument, then Moore’s view, even if true, is not very helpful.
Conservatism: it is reasonable to stick with what you already believe until reason to change comes along. We do believe (CS), so it is reasonable not to switch. Two versions of this, one amounts to an objection to (7-1), the other to (7-2). (Note: text says, p. 143, that conservatism rejects 7-2.) The former: belief is itself evidence. The idea: the fact that I believe, or am so strongly inclined to believe, or that we all (?) are so strongly inclined to believe (CS) is evidence that favors (CS) over its rivals. So (7-1) is false. Example 7.2 refutes this line of thought.
The second version of conservatism adopts something more like a practical principle. The analogous practical principle is quite plausible. Car analogy. (Does this actually work once you factor in the costs of changing?) Whatever the merits of the practical principle, the epistemological principle is not plausible. Two reasons for this: i) Because suspending judgment is an option, you do not need a way to resolve this sort of case, whereas you do in the practical situation. ii) It’s clear that the fact that you already have a belief has no bearing at all on whether you have knowledge, and so has nothing to do with whether you are justified.
Immediate perceptual justification: this denies (7-1). See quote from Jim Pryor on p. 145. Our experiences represent the world as being a certain way. For example, my experience represents the world as if there is a table in front of me. As Pryor puts it, “It perceptually seems to me that there is a table in front of me (and not as if a computer is stimulating my brain in a “tablish” way.)” I don’t need any other evidence or justification for the belief that there is a table before me. Some more details:
Pryor’s thesis:
Whenever a person has an experience as of p’s being the case, the person has immediate prima facie justification for believing that p.
1) mediate v. immediate is not a matter of strength of justification. Immediately justified beliefs need not be infallible, etc.
2) immediate justification is a matter of how they are justified - justification does not depend upon any other beliefs. Immediately justified beliefs need not be psychologically immediate or spontaneous.
3) immediately justified beliefs might require other beliefs in order to hold them, but not to justify them. It might be, say, that in order to have the belief that there’s a table here, you have to believe other things - there’s a physical object here. But that isn’t part of what justifies it.
4) prima facie justification means that you have a reason, but it could be overridden. E.g., my tablish experience gives prima facie justification for the belief that there is a table here, but if I also have reason to think that I’ve been drugged, or that it’s just hologram, etc., that justification will be defeated. So, in the ordinary case, you have no defeating evidence. So you are justified.
5) You could also have mediate justification for the same proposition. E.g, you might tell me that there’s a table there.
6) People can have this justification w/out knowing about justification. Little kids, etc. have it. And you don’t have to be able to give an argument.
The hard challenge for this thesis: for which values of p does the thesis hold? To see that it does not hold for all values, consider the naive gardener in my garden. Knows nothing about trees. He has a clear view of a hornbeam tree. But this experience does not give him any justification for that belief. Suppose I tell him that one of the trees is a hornbeam. He has no more reason to think it’s this one rather than that one. But maybe his experience does give him immediate justification for thinking it’s a tree. But what’s the difference here?
Some examples from Pryor’s paper: p. 536 Honda (no); p. 538, gas gauge (no); p. 538, light (yes); p. 538, policeman (no); p. 539, looks confident (?), (yes); p. 539, passed the test (no); p. 539, expressionist painting (yes!). So the idea is that certain propositions are directly represented in experience. Others are inferred from that. And the principle only applies to the former.
One other thing he says, in footnote 37: these experiences have a certain phenomenal force.
One really hard thing here is seeing just how the distinction between what’s perceptually basic and what is not can be spelled out. [Topic for final paper here.] Example 7.3 brings this out. Consider a novice and an expert looking at a tree. The image is exactly the same. Does the image “say” “Japanese maple” or does it say “deciduous tree with sharply indented leaves” or “brownish trunk and branchlike structure with reddish-green sharply indented things hanging off it” or what. The more you read into the experience, the more it seems that you are saying that people get the relevant justified beliefs “for free” - even when they don’t know about the relevant things.
I’m inclined to think that all cases are like the non-basic ones, even beliefs about colors and shapes and the like. The current experience by itself is not enough to justify any external world belief. People with similar experiences, but different background information, are the cases to think about. And things here are very hard to think through because we don’t know exactly what counts as “the same experience”. I think that what justifies “there is a hand” or even “there is facing flesh-colored surface of such and such a shape” is something simpler - the sensory character of experience plus background information. “Flicker vision” example (not in text) brings out the point even better.
Best Explanationism: The central claim is that the common sense hypothesis is the simpler hypothesis, and thus the better hypothesis, and thus justified. This is appealing, but there are worries. In what sense are the common sense explanations best? Do ordinary folks have to think about the premises of the Best Explanation Argument in order to be justified? If so, then few people other than epistemologists are justified. This is then no vindication of the standard view. If not, how exactly do these facts about explanations get beliefs justified?
So my own inclination is toward something a little less dogmatic than Pryor’s view: the experience plus background information justifies beliefs like “there’s a hand”. But there’s something - I can’t say very clearly just what - about my overall situation that justifies these beliefs. It’s not simply the experience itself. My current evidence supports both “Things look hand-like now” and “Usually, when things look this way, there’s a hand there.” My evidence also supports the obvious consequence of these. But this is not to say that I think these things as premises and infer the conclusion. Rather, my evidence supports that conclusion. (Remember evidentialism.) So, the difference between this view and Pryor’s is that I think background evidence is always playing a role.
There’s a residual hard question: what exactly about my background evidence justifies “Usually, when things look this way there’s a hand there.” It seems clear to me that I am justified in that. I’ve learned it through experience, perhaps with help of those who taught me the language. But this is very difficult to spell out.
Finally, we may also consider best explanation account of induction: the best explanation of observed regularities is regularities in nature.
[Note: we didn’t have a chance to discuss all of the points above in class. ]