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I Talked to a Genius and All I Got was Knowledge

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Abstract

Bryan Frances’s recent argument is for the epistemic position called Live Skepticism. The Live Skepticism Argument (LSA) attempts to establish a restricted set of skeptical conclusions. The LSA’s “skeptical hypotheses” are scientific and philosophical positions that are “live actual possibilities” in an intellectual community. In order to “rule out” live hypotheses, an expert must know them to be false. However, since these are live hypotheses in this expert’s intellectual community—endorsed by others who have parallel levels of knowledge, intelligence, and understanding—this expert is unable to rule them out. Consistent with the LSA is the outcome that people not exposed to these live hypotheses can know what these experts cannot. However, in this paper, I defeat the LSA by developing and defending a counterexample that focuses on the phenomenon of genius testimony. Everyone, including the LSA’s proponent, can and should allow that expertise comes in degrees. While in many cases a person’s intelligence, understanding, and knowledge are parallel to others in the field, there are some who are extraordinary in their intelligence, understanding, and knowledge (geniuses). If an expert meets with a genius, it is possible that the genius provides this individual with beliefs that can rule out a skeptical hypothesis. Therefore, an expert can have knowledge, even if the skeptical hypothesis is live and endorsed by others who have parallel levels of knowledge, intelligence, and understanding. After providing this counterexample, I present three potential objections, and show how people can know global warming exists and that smoking does not give someone cancer. I conclude by defending this counterexample from a likely reply by proponents of the LSA involving luck and knowledge.

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Notes

  1. TET is better known as situationalism and argued for by John Doris and Gilbert Harman (Doris 1998, 2002; Harman 2000).

  2. Henceforth, I use WIMM for ‘well-informed mere mortal’

  3. However, Frances does mention these reasons and evidence may have other merits.

  4. This is the example Francis puts forward in “When a Skeptical Hypothesis is Live.”

  5. Emphasis in original.

  6. Henceforth, for the sake of simplicity I will use the term mere expert instead of WIMM in respect to their status with a genius. However, one can think of ‘mere experts’ and ‘WIMMs’ as being interchangeable.

  7. This example also shows how the third objection against the genius testimony counterexample fails: Gretchen doesn’t give Jo evidence that would violate the 9th condition.

  8. In no way should this example be construed as advocating for people to smoke. Instead, it is meant to illustrate that many of our ordinary beliefs, such as smoking gives you cancer, are not accurate when matched against the scientific theories which underwrite them.

References

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  • Harman, G. (2000). Moral philosophy meets social psychology: Virtue ethics and the fundamental attribution error. In Explaining value and other essays in moral philosophy (pp. 165–78). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Acknowledgments

This manuscript benefited greatly from editing by Christina Guajardo, Brittany Campbell, and Elizabeth Enck, as well as excellent comments and suggestions from an anonymous reviewer. This manuscript was generously supported by a clinical ethics fellowship in the Section of Integrated Ethics in cancer care at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Finally, this manuscript was the result of interacting with EJ Coffman. There are few philosophers better than Dr. Coffman and, in terms of being a teacher, there are none.

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  1. Section of Integrated Ethics in Cancer Care, The University of Texas MD Anderson, Houston, TX, USA

    Gavin G. Enck

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  1. Gavin G. Enck
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Correspondence to Gavin G. Enck.

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Enck, G.G. I Talked to a Genius and All I Got was Knowledge. Philosophia 42, 335–347 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-013-9494-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-013-9494-6

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