Abstract
Does inferential justification require the subject to be aware that her premises support her conclusion? Externalists tend to answer “no” and internalists tend to answer “yes”. In fact, internalists often hold the strong higher-level requirement that an argument justifies its conclusion only if the subject justifiably believes that her premises support her conclusion. I argue for a middle ground. Against most externalists, I argue that inferential justification requires that one be aware that her premises support her conclusion. Against many internalists, I argue that this higher-level awareness needn’t be doxastic or justified. I also argue that the required higher-level awareness needn’t be caused in some appropriate way, e.g. by a reliable or properly functioning faculty. I suspect that this weaker higher-level requirement is overlooked because, at first glance, it seems absurd to allow nondoxastic, unjustified, and unreliably-caused higher-level awareness to contribute to inferential justification. One of the central goals of this paper is to explain how such weak awareness can make an essential contribution to inferential justification.
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Notes
I don’t think the plausibility of this claim depends much on how we construe the internalism/externalism debate. If one wants to press me on the issue, though, I’d follow Bergmann’s account (2006, p. 9).
Since beliefs about evidential support typically concern propositions supporting other propositions (and not beliefs supporting other beliefs), Leite (2008, pp. 421–422) would say that beliefs about evidential support are typically first-level ones. Yet I count such beliefs as higher-level insofar as they concern the propositional content of our beliefs, which is why I count the above requirement as a higher-level one.
Some internalists hold that inferential justification requires that E support P from the subject’s perspective (e.g., Bonjour 1985, pp. 41–44). In a way, the main point of this paper is to explain how the subject’s perspective is related to inferential justification.
I respond to Cling’s argument for this requirement in my forthcoming.
Fumerton isn’t the only proponent of HLJB that seems to express indecision about what requirement he is really defending. If believing P requires occurrently considering P now or at some past time, then Leite (2008, pp. 439–440) apparently would give up on HLJB and require only that the subject have certain recognitional or inferential abilities.
As I use the term, “aware” is factive: I cannot be aware of E’s supporting P unless E really does support P. Two consequences of this factivity are worth mentioning. First, HLAW entails the requirement that an argument can justify belief in its conclusion only if one’s premises do in fact evidentially support their conclusion. This is a relatively uncontroversial requirement, but Fumerton rejects it in his earlier work (1985, p. 40). I’d be surprised if he still rejects it (see his 2006, p. 190, nt. 7), but I am sympathetic with Huemer’s (2002, pp. 335–338) reply in any case. Second, if one has a justified but false belief that E supports P, one can satisfy HLJB without satisfying HLAW. Yet anyone who endorses HLJB is likely committed to HLAW because the evidential support requirement is so plausible.
One potential virtue of HLAW is that it can be generalized to all kinds of justification, whereas HLJB can’t. A general version of HLJB would lead to regress because it would hold that the higher-level awareness required for justification itself must be justified (see Fumerton 1995 for further clarification of the regress). A general version of HLAW would avoid this regress because it would not demand that the required higher-level awareness be justified.
HLAW demands that we be aware of the fact that E supports P. Here I assume that one can be aware of that fact by having a mental state (e.g., a belief or seeming) with the propositional content that E supports P. As I mentioned in note 7, awareness is factive. So mental states with the propositional content that E supports P provide awareness of E’s supporting P only if the content of those states is true.
See Fumerton (1995, pp. 73–79) for a more detailed explication of acquaintance.
An anonymous referee suggested the following objection to P1: (1) Since “aware” is factive, whenever one has the awareness required by HLAW, it is true that E supports P. (2) If 1, then the awareness required by HLAW always contributes to the likely truth of the conclusion. Therefore, (3) the awareness required by HLAW always contributes to the likely truth of the conclusion. I’ll assume that 2 is false and P1 is true, which will make defending HLAW more challenging.
For relevant discussion of the truth connection, see Bonjour 1985, pp. 7–8; Bergmann 2006, pp. 141–143; and especially Cohen 1984. Some may take the truth connection to be a relation between truth and, not a belief, but the belief’s propositional content or the way the belief is caused, etc. Fine. Nothing significant in this paper hangs on whether the truth connection is a relation between truth and belief rather than a relation between truth and the belief’s propositional content, etc.
Even some externalists agree, e.g. Greco 1999, p. 280.
In some of his later work, Greco (e.g., Greco and Breyer 2008, p. 175) imposes an additional requirement on subjective justification, namely that these cognitive dispositions be cognitively integrated with the subject’s other cognitive dispositions. This additional requirement doesn’t threaten my basic objection to Greco’s proposal.
For further defense of this claim and its relation to externalism, see Sect. 3 of my manuscript.
Proper functionalists about justification or warrant tend to think that evidential support is relative to the design plan of the cognizer (e.g., Plantinga 1993, pp. 168, 172–173; Bergmann 2006, p. 130). If they are right, then nothing would count as (inferential) evidence for such cognizers, as they are designed not to make any inferences. Yet this is highly counterintuitive. Modus ponens arguments seem to support their conclusions for any cognizer, not just those who are designed to make inferences. See my manuscript for an extended attack on externalist accounts of evidential support.
When the Alpha Centaurian Seer acquires his new inferential faculty, we can easily imagine that he has relevant defeaters, such as having a justified belief that “I am only reliable when I form beliefs non-inferentially.” The possession of such defeaters might explain Plantinga’s suggestion that, in a case like this, the first few uses of the new faculty wouldn’t produce warrant (1993, p. 31). But it isn’t necessary that he have such defeaters.
As I mentioned in an earlier note, for further defense of this claim and its relation to externalism, see Sect. 3 of my manuscript.
Strictly speaking, Thomson doesn’t address the basing relation generally but only inference, i.e. basing one belief on another belief.
Two differences are worth mentioning concerning what Fumerton and I say about the relevant sort of justification. The first difference concerns the inferential variety. Although Fumerton agrees that higher-level awareness that E supports P supplies the satisfying assurance (2006, p. 190, nt. 7), at times he further requires that the awareness come in the form of a justified belief. I do not. The second difference concerns the non-inferential variety. Naturally, Fumerton holds that his acquaintance account of non-inferential justification makes justification satisfying and assuring. This is so, he says, because the truth-maker of one’s belief is right there before one’s mind (2006, p. 189). My analogy with the dollar suggests that a truth-maker’s being before one’s mind is not sufficient for having assurance and satisfaction. Speckled hen cases confirm what is suggested by the dollar analogy. In speckled hen cases, the truth-maker—a perceptual experience of a 43-speckled hen—does not typically provide one with assurance that one is having an experience of a hen with precisely 43 speckles. One has that assurance only if one sees or is acquainted with the connection between the perceptual experience and the proposition that one is having such an experience (cf. Fumerton 2005, esp. 129–130). (The point here is not that Fumerton’s acquaintance account of non-inferential justification is false; rather, it is just that he is mistaken about why his account of non-inferential justification would make that property satisfying and assuring.).
In what sense must one believe P because of the higher-level awareness? I make the widely-held assumption that there is a causal condition on the basing relation: a belief in P is based on some mental state M only if M non-deviantly causes P. The higher-level awareness also needs to non-deviantly cause P in whatever sense of “non-deviantly cause” is required for the basing relation. If, as I think, there are other necessary conditions on the basing relation, the higher-level awareness doesn’t need to satisfy those additional conditions in order to secure the mental connection. In such a case, a belief in P wouldn’t need to be based on the higher-level awareness. If, on the other hand, the causal condition is also a sufficient condition on the basing relation, then a belief in the conclusion needs to be based on the higher-level awareness.
At times, Fumerton seems sympathetic with this counterexample to HLJB (2006, p. 190, nt. 7).
This variation of HLAW* assumes that higher-level awareness is required, so I didn’t rule it out in 2.1. There I ruled out proposals that appealed to a difference in reliability or proper function without appealing to higher-level awareness.
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Acknowledgments
Many thanks to those who supported this project in one way or another. One referee provided especially generous and helpful comments. Other helpful comments were provided by Alex Arnold, Andrew Bailey, Michael Bergmann, Rod Bertolet, Andrew Cling, Martin Curd, Paul Draper, Mylan Engel, Nate King, Brent Madison, Andrew Moon, Brad Rettler, anonymous referees, and the audiences at the Southern Society for Philosophy and the Australasian Association for Philosophy. Financial support was provided by the Center for Philosophy of Religion at the University of Notre Dame.
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Tucker, C. Movin’ on up: higher-level requirements and inferential justification. Philos Stud 157, 323–340 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-010-9650-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-010-9650-9