Abstract
Can we show that our senses are reliable sources of information about the world? To show this, we need to establish that most of our perceptual judgments have been true. But we cannot determine these inductive instances without relying upon sense perception. Thus, it seems, we cannot establish the reliability of sense perception by means of an argument without falling into epistemic circularity. In this paper, I argue that this consequence is not an epistemological disaster. For this purpose, I defend a normative claim that it is reasonable to accept the general reliability of our perceptual judgments, instead of a factual claim that our perceptual judgments are generally reliable. More specifically, I offer a normative practical argument which explains why it is reasonable to accept the general reliability of our perceptual judgments, even though we cannot establish the general reliability of our perceptual judgments by means of theoretical reasoning.
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Notes
In this paper I assume that it is desirable to show that it is reasonable for us to accept epistemic principles such as EP1. But some philosophers do not think it necessary to show this. Notably, James Van Cleve (1979) argues that knowledge of an epistemic principle is not necessary for knowledge to arise in accordance with it, so that it suffices for an epistemic principle to be just true. However, there is an important reason why we should not ignore the demand for justifying an epistemic principle. If we cannot meet this demand for justification, we will lose an important ground on which to rightly reject beliefs based on unreliable principles.
To see the above point more clearly, consider a crystal ball gazer who holds beliefs on the basis of his crystal ball gazing, because he believes in its reliability. Suppose that we cannot show that it is reasonable to accept an epistemic principle such as EP1. Then we cannot rationally criticize the crystal ball gazer’s beliefs despite the fact that he fails to meet the demand for justification, and so we cannot help but allow his beliefs. This is because we cannot rationally defend our own epistemic principle such as EP1, and so our epistemic situation is basically equivalent to his situation. The only difference between the two cases is that crystal ball gazing happens to be unreliable, whereas our perceptual abilities happen to be reliable. But the big problem with the above supposition is that we might not know the difference. Consequently, if we cannot help but allow beliefs based on unreliable epistemic principles, we cannot pursue our epistemic goal in such a way that we improve our chances of success at achieving the goal by engaging in rational debate. In addition, if we cannot epistemically evaluate epistemic principles so as to reliably distinguish between reliable principles from unreliable ones, having knowledge in accordance with an epistemic principle will be a matter of luck. This is because having knowledge will depend on a contingent fact that an epistemic principle on the basis of which one holds beliefs happens to be reliable. But our epistemic endeavors should not depend on such a sheer luck. Due to these reasons, it is the core intuition of epistemic internalism that we should not ignore the demand for justification even regarding epistemic principles. In this respect, it is worth noting that Van Cleve is an epistemic externalist.
If any reason or principle needs to be defended by another reason or principle, our knowledge is bound to be threatened by an infinite regress of justification. Thus, the Rationalists, such as Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz thought that self-evident first principles, which do not need to be proven, are required as a solution to the regress problem. For example, Descartes writes: “[These first principles] should be so clear and evident that the mind of man cannot doubt their truth when it attentively applies itself to consider them” (Descartes 1911, p. 204). In addition, according to Roderick Chisholm, if a subject is in what he calls ‘a self-presenting state’, then it is evident to him that he is in the state in question. For instance: “If seeming to have a headache is a state of affairs that is self-presenting for S at the present moment, then S does now seem to have a headache and, moreover, it is evident to him that he seems to have a headache” (Chisholm 1977, p. 22).
For a detailed defense of this type of instrumental reasoning, see Lee 2011.
For a detailed discussion of this view, see Lee 2011.
My claim that justification is a normative concept is a widely accepted view. But there are admittedly some challenges against it. Most notably, Richard Fumerton makes the following objection:
Consider, for example, a patient who is told that if she can get herself to believe that she will recover from the devastating cancer ravaging her body, that will at least increase the probability that she will recover. That might give the patient a strong reason to try to acquire the belief even if it is not epistemically rational to believe that she will get well. … But let us suppose that by forming the relevant belief, the patient produces for herself a long life devoted to scientific and philosophical investigation, investigation that results in an enormous number of true beliefs. Despite accomplishing the goal of believing what is true through believing that she will get well, our patient (by hypothesis) had no epistemic reason to believe that she would get well. (Fumerton 2006, pp. 34–35)
On my view, we can handle the above kind of objection in a similar way as utilitarians in ethics handle the so-called problem of justice by adopting rule utilitarianism instead of act utilitarianism. On the problem of justice, the overall happiness of a society could sometimes be maximized by taking an innocent person as a scapegoat, but it is against justice to sacrifice an innocent person even in such a case. To avoid this problem, some utilitarians uphold rule utilitarianism, according to which the correct ethical standards should be constructed on an analogy with the way the utilitarian principle applies to juridical laws. Thus, on this proposal, an ethical rule is correct if and only if having the rule in effect tends to maximize the overall happiness of those to whom it applies. I agree with Sellars that the concept of being justified in holding a belief has been developed on the basis of our social practice of demanding justification and responding to such demands. On this view, in an analogous way to rule utilitarianism, we can say that an epistemic norm is correct just in case having the norm in effect is conducive to our public epistemic goal, and that it is our epistemic norm that one ought to hold a belief only when it is based on appropriate epistemic grounds. As a consequence, whether one’s belief is justified or not should be evaluated in terms of whether it conforms to epistemic norms rather than whether it produces more true beliefs (see Lee 2008 for a detailed defense of this view). Along these lines, we can argue that the patient in Fumerton’s example violates an epistemic norm, because her belief that she will recover from the cancer is not based on appropriate epistemic grounds. Another thing to note is that if a groundless claim is allowed without being punished or criticized for it, the survival and general welfare of our community might become more vulnerable to risks due to wrong information at least in the long run.
For a detailed defense of the goal-dependent view of justification, see Lee 2011.
I have provided a detailed discussion of this view in B. D. Lee, The truth-conduciveness problem of coherentism and deflationalism, unpublished.
The infinitists such as Peter Klein, Jeremy Fantl, and Scott Aikin challenge the claim that the infinite regress of justification is impossible. It is beyond the scope of this paper to fully address their challenges. Thus, let me just mention why I do not accept infinitism. On infinitism, inferential justifications can ramify without end and must do so for a belief that is truly justified. The most serious problem with this view is, as Carl Ginet (2005, p. 155) points out, that “it is committed to the thesis that inference alone can create justification.” According to Klein (2005, p. 136), “[infinitism] can solve the regress problem because it endorses a warrant-emergent form of reasoning in which warrant increases as the series of reasons lengthens.” Likewise, Fantl (2003, p. 554) says: “All else being equal, the longer your series of adequate reasons for a proposition, the more justified it is for you”. Even on Aikin’s (2011) ‘impure’ form of infinitism, a long chain of inferential relation can create (partial) warrant. This is because he claims that inferential relations are necessary for any justification, although he denies that they are sufficient.
To begin with, I agree with Ginet (2005, pp. 148–49) that a formally good inference can only transfer justification from premises to conclusion so that it cannot create justification even if its inferential chain is long enough. Suppose that there is an infinite series of justification such that
$$ {\mathrm{B}}_1\leftarrow {\mathrm{B}}_2\leftarrow {\mathrm{B}}_3\leftarrow {\mathrm{B}}_4\leftarrow \dots $$If the justification of B2 depends on B3, we cannot say that B1 is justified by B2 until we know that B3 has a positive justificatory status. Likewise, if the justification of B3 depends on B4, we cannot say that B2 is justified by B3 until we know that B4 has a positive justificatory status. Clearly, to determine whether B1 is justified, we cannot continue this process ad infinitum. Therefore, unless at a certain finite stage of this process we have a belief which can be accepted by default without further justification, we cannot determine whether B1 is justified. Along this line of thought, we can argue that if, as the infinitists claim, justification is a matter of having an infinite series of non-repeating reasons, we cannot evaluate whether a given belief is justified or not. If, on the other hand, certain beliefs have default justification such that the burden of proof for them is shifted to the challengers, then we can evaluate whether or not beliefs are justified on the basis of such default beliefs, and so we don’t need infinitism. In this regard, it is worth comparing the following two claims. (i) You always have to answer questions about what you know until there are not any more questions. And there are in principle no final questions. (ii) As for beliefs which have default justification, you have to answer a challenge only when it offers a positive reason for thinking that a given belief is false. We can still be intellectually responsible by embracing (ii) rather than (i), and so we are not forced to accept infinitism.
I have claimed that the skeptic and the non-skeptic cannot engage in genuine debates unless they assume that one side or the other side can defend their position. One may object, however, that the ancient skeptics would have disagreed with this claim. According to Casey Perin (2010), the Pyrrhonists took themselves to be searching for the truth but without assuming that they could find it. Admittedly, it could be that Pyrrhonists took themselves to be searching for the truth but without assuming that they could find it. But, as noted, the purpose of this paper is to show that we can ward off skeptical challenges to the effect that we can continue to engage in our epistemic endeavors as usual. Thus Pyrrhonists’ view above poses a serious problem for my view only if they can provide us with a positive reason for thinking that our epistemic presumption is false. As noted, we have no other way but to rely on our concept of justification in order to justify some claim, and so we should not give up our epistemic presumption unless the skeptics show that it is false. And the skeptics can successfully do so only by engaging in genuine debates with us. Moreover, as also noted, we can engage in genuine debates with the skeptics only when they assume (at least for the sake of argument) that one side or the other side can defend their position. It is due to these reasons that Pyrrhonists’ view above does not pose a serious problem for my view.
I have provided a detailed defense of this claim in B. D. Lee, The truth-conduciveness problem of coherentism and deflationalism, unpublished.
This objection is raised by an anonymous reviewer.
For a detailed discussion of this distinction, see Lee 2011. See also footnote 18.
An anonymous reviewer raises the following objection: “The author says that the skeptic usually does not dispute the legitimacy of our deductive reasoning. But some skeptics would, in fact, dispute the legitimacy of our deductive reasoning. On some interpretations of Descartes, for example, that is what he is doing in calling clear and distinct perception into question. And, arguably, Carneades (the Academic skeptic) thought he was engaging in rational discourse even though he thought we could at most have a limited assent to what is plausible.”
As mentioned before, it is not the purpose of this paper to refute all kinds of skepticism. Rather it is to show that we can ward off skeptical challenges to the effect that we can continue to engage in our epistemic pursuit as usual. And we should not give up our concept of justification unless the skeptic shows us that it is indeed incoherent. Moreover, we can engage in genuine debates with the skeptic only when the skeptic agrees with us (at least for the sake of argument) that one side or the other side can defend their position. In this regard, notice that if the skeptic refuses to accept even the legitimacy of our deductive reasoning, the skeptic and the non-skeptic share virtually no rule of reasoning on the basis of which the skeptic can refute the non-skeptic. For this reason, even if the skeptic claims that she can only give a limited assent to what is plausible the legitimacy of our deductive reasoning must be the kind of thing to which she must give at least a limited assent in order to engage in rational debates with the non-skeptic. If the skeptic even refuses to give such a limited assent, the skeptic cannot succeed in refuting our view by means of a correct argument. For a further discussion of this claim, see Lee 2011.
Philie (2009) argues against Wright along this line.
Let me discuss one more objection raised by an anonymous reviewer: “Here, the author is trading on there being two senses of ‘epistemic’. It might mean truth-apt, or it might mean only relevant to the pursuit of truth. The practical argument is clearly insufficient to establish that it is reasonable in the sense of being truth-apt (or likely to be true) that our perceptual judgments are reliable. But if it means only that it is reasonable, in the sense that it is related to our pursuit of truth (a pursuit that might be totally unsuccessful), then the author has not provided a reply to the skeptic.”
However, on my view, the above-mentioned two senses of ‘epistemic’ are closely interrelated with each other at the fundamental level. I endorse the deflationary conception of truth, which is nowadays very influential among truth theorists in the philosophy of logic. Consider the following equivalence schema: ‘p’ is true if and only if p. On the deflationary conception of truth, there is complete cognitive equivalence between the left-hand side of the biconditional and its right-hand side, and there is nothing else to say about truth other than what the truth predicate does. And what the truth predicate does is to serve as a vehicle of generalization, semantic ascent, and certain other logical or expressive function. Due to this reason, truth is not a substantial concept, and hence it cannot mark a substantial norm of belief independent of the norms of justification. In addition, and more importantly, I agree with Sellars that probability or truth-aptness in the non-metrical sense is more fundamental than probability in the metrical sense. On this view, to say that p is truth-apt in the basic non-metrical sense is to say that (relevant things considered) there is good reason to accept p vis-à-vis the epistemic goal. Consequently, if we can defend that (relevant things considered) there is good reason to accept the general reliability of our perceptual judgments vis-à-vis the epistemic goal then this is tantamount to defending that the general reliability of our perceptual judgments is truth-apt (in the basic non-metrical sense). For a more detailed discussion and defense of this view, see Lee 2011, and B. D. Lee, The truth-conduciveness problem of coherentism and deflationalism, unpublished.
I’d like to thank an anonymous reviewer for his or her very helpful comments on an early version of this paper.
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Lee, B.D. Epistemic Principles and Epistemic Circularity. Philosophia 42, 413–432 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-013-9495-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-013-9495-5