Abstract
Timothy Williamson argues against the tactic of criticizing confidence in a theory by identifying a logical consequence of the theory whose probability is not raised by the evidence. He dubs it “the consequence fallacy”. In this paper, we will show that Williamson’s formulation of the tactic in question is ambiguous. On one reading of Williamson’s formulation, the tactic is indeed a fallacy, but it is not a commonly used tactic; on another reading, it is a commonly used tactic (or at least more often used than the former tactic), but it is not a fallacy.
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Notes
The distinction between the probability of a theory’s being raised by the evidence and a theory’s being made likely to be true by the evidence is basically the same as the distinction between ‘confirmation as increase in firmness’ and ‘confirmation as firmness’ that Carnap makes in the preface to the second edition of Logical Foundations of Probability (see Carnap 1962, pp. xv–xiv).
As Laurence BonJour points out, “if finding epistemically justified beliefs did not substantially increase the likelihood of finding true ones, then epistemic justification would be irrelevant to our main cognitive goal and of dubious worth” (BonJour 1985, p. 8).
Cf. “The radical skeptic I will be confronting holds that (some significant class of) common sense beliefs are not at all justified, which is to say: there is no reason to believe that they are true; it is no more rational to think they are true than to think they are false. According to one theory of probability, this is the same as to say that the beliefs are no more likely to be true than false” (Huemer 2001, p. 20; original italics).
Many epistemologists understand the skeptical argument to employ both (EP1) and (EP2), though their versions of the skeptical argument may not be exactly the same as the version we consider here. Brueckner’s final reconstruction of the skeptical argument, however, employs only (EP1) (see Brueckner 1994, p. 833).
References
BonJour, L. (1985). The structure of empirical knowledge. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Brueckner, A. (1994). The structure of the skeptical argument. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 54, 827–835.
Carnap, R. (1962). Logical foundations of probability (2nd ed.). Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Huemer, M. (2001). Skepticism and the veil of perception. Lanham, MD: Roman & Littlefield.
Williamson, T. (2007). The philosophy of philosophy. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
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We are grateful to an anonymous referee for helpful comments.
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Wong, Wh., Yudell, Z. How fallacious is the consequence fallacy?. Philos Stud 165, 221–227 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-012-9947-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-012-9947-y