Abstract
The following three propositions appear to be individually defensible but jointly inconsistent: (1) reliability is a necessary condition on epistemic justification; (2) on contested matters in philosophy, my beliefs are not reliably formed; (3) some of these beliefs are epistemically justified. I explore the nature and scope of the problem, examine and reject some candidate solutions, compare the issue with ones arising in discussions about disagreement, and offer a brief assessment of our predicament.
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Notes
With thanks to EJ Coffman for suggesting that the point be put in this way.
A more careful formulation would need to disaggregate belief-independent methods (basic sources), whose reliability could be checked in the manner I will be suggesting, from belief-dependent methods such as reasoning, whose reliability is only conditional on the reliability of the beliefs that serve as inputs into the method. (Thanks to Al Casullo.)
I should add: if (contrary to my comments about the prevalence of shared method) we regard the philosophical Ramanujen’s methods to be peculiar to him or her, then nothing in the foregoing gives us a reason to doubt the existence of a reliable philosophical method. But see above. (With thanks to Jon Garthoff.)
With thanks to Aaron Snyder and Josh Thurow, for raising this objection.
The distinction between undercutting and rebutting defeaters is owed to Pollock (1986, pp. 38–39).
It might be said that one’s subjective probability ought to decrease only if one is aware of the fact of diversity. It is not obvious that this is correct: the fact of diversity within philosophy might well be a fact of which one who does philosophy ought to be aware (see below). But even granting the awareness restriction, we still reach an uncomfortable (and somewhat paradoxical) conclusion: the more one knows of the history and practice of philosophy, the less likely it will be for one to arrive at (ultima facie) justified philosophical belief. We’ve all heard of knowing less by knowing more, but this sort of systematic effect seems to go far beyond anything we would have expected. (See below, where I discuss this in the context of a comparison with the literature on the epistemology of disagreement.)
The proposition is thus a normative defeater. For an argument to the effect that epistemic externalists can and should incorporate normative defeaters into their account of justification, see Gibbons (2006). (Gibbons’ form of externalism is not reliabilism, however.)
The analogy is not perfect. In the case Bonjour describes, there are generic reasons for distrusting a particular method (clairvoyance). In the present case, there are generic reasons for distrusting any method that delivers verdicts on contested philosophical matters—whatever the method happens to be. However, this difference is irrelevant to the thrust of the Undercutting Defeater Argument.
Thanks to EJ Coffman for discussion of this point.
For my understanding of the prima facie/ultima facie distinction, I am relying on Senor (1996).
I owe this objection, and the example to follow, to Bryan Frances.
One thinks here of the work of Stephen Stich, Jonathan Weinberg, and others.
It may not be just philosophy. As I suggest below, the same argument could be run on any intellectually demanding domain where great intellectual achievement is compatible with the prevalence of false belief.
For an argument that philosophical method does not proceed this way, see Williamson (2007).
I thank Baron Reed for emphasizing this point.
Thanks to Bryan Frances for this suggestion.
See Lackey (2007).
Perhaps the ancient skeptics were right after all, at least in practice: we have no business claiming philosophical knowledge. Though neither we nor they should actually assert this. Is this a happy position? (With thanks to Baron Reed.)
Thanks to Baron Reed for raising this issue.
References
Bonjour, L. (1980). Externalist theories of empirical knowledge. Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 5.
Cummins, R. (1998). Reflections on reflective equilibrium. In M. DePaul & W. Ramsey (Eds.), Rethinking intuition: The psychology of intuition and its role in philosophical inquiry (pp. 113–128). Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield.
Frances, B. (2005). Scepticism comes alive. Oxford: OUP.
Frances, B. Who am I to argue with David Lewis? (unpublished manuscript).
Gibbons, J. (2006). Access externalism. Mind, 115(457), 19–39.
Henderson, D., & Horgan, T. (2007). The ins and outs of transglobal reliabilism. In S. Goldberg (Ed.), Internalism and externalism in semantics and epistemology (pp. 100–130). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lackey, J. (2007). Norms of assertion. Nous, 41(4), 594–626.
Pollock, J. (1986). Contemporary theories of knowledge. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield.
Senor, T. (1996). The prima/ultima facie justification distinction in epistemology. Philosophy and Phemenological Research, 56(3), 551–566.
Sosa, E. (2007). A virtue epistemology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Williamson, T. (2007). The philosophy of philosophy. London: Blackwell.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to the audience at the first annual Midwest Epistemology Workshop (Northwestern University, November 30–December 1, 2007), where this article was workshopped. Special thanks to Robert Audi, James Beebe, Al Casullo, Richard Fumerton, Jon Garthoff, John Greco, David Henderson, Dan Korman, Jennifer Lackey, Matthew McGrath, Andrew Moon, Baron Reed, Aaron Snyder, Ernie Sosa, and Josh Thurow, for helpful comments at the workshop; and to EJ Coffman, Sean Ebels Duggan, Bryan Frances, and Baron Reed, for extensive comments on earlier drafts of this article.
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Goldberg, S.C. Reliabilism in philosophy. Philos Stud 142, 105–117 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-008-9300-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-008-9300-7